The Future Condominiums. Photo: Kelvin Dickinson, Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation
Paul Rudolph’s design of the exterior of the Future Condominium is used as an example of optical illusion in the article ‘Can we change our vantage point to explore imaginal neglect?’ published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences by Paolo Bartolomeo and Sylvie Chokron.
Image: Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Write Bartolomeo and Chokron,
The objects in Figures 1 and 2 were designed to represent the salient features of a building, two views of which are shown in Fig-ure 3 (Griffiths & Zaidi 2000; Halper 1997). Notice that in the left panel the balconies seem implausibly tilted up, whereas in the right panel they implausibly appear tilted down. A frontal view of the building reveals the balconies to be horizontal parallelograms.
This knowledge never weakens the illusion.
Image: Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Paul Rudolph’s building exterior. Photo: Nicolas Janberg
The 35-story building, located at 32nd Street and Third Avenue, was built in 1990-1993.
Floor plan showing the parallelogram shape of the balconies. Image: Douglas Elliman
The building has 165 condominium apartments and was developed by Donald Zucker. It was designed by Costas Kondylis with Paul Rudolph as consulting architect for the building’s distinctive exterior.