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THERMAL
LONDON: BUILDINGS Rather
than offer serious comment on a building's thermal performance,
the aim here is simply to look at them, in the context of their
wider environments, from a 'Fresh' (thermal) perspective, simply
to see if anything of interest can be discerned.
Numerous examples of poor insulation and energy leakage were captured. This is to be expected however, in that thermal
imaging is a tried and tested tool for this kind of analysis.
Incidentally, many of the problems identified by thermal imaging
can often be quickly and cheaply remedied and, in due course,
the Energy! page will explore this further.
The primary purpose behind this website, was to find something 'New' and therefore,
non-engineering based, from experimenting with thermal imaging.
At the outset, it was entirely possible the experiment would
flop. However, upon review of the images captured of buildings
over the several days the camera was borrowed, three main
revelations seem to stand out. (The opportunity to do the
zoo animals was an added bonus)
The relationship between people
and buildings as captured via a thermal imaging camera, is seen
far more vividly, as the humans are generally so much
warmer. In the top right hand picture, for example, a lone
doorman stands out against the relatively vast backdrop of the
Canary Wharf office building behind him. See the People
and Transport page for more.
By loosing so much visual
detail, the form of buildings is so much more apparent, as can
be seen in the middle right picture of the roof of the St
Pancras Hotel, from the courtyard of the British Museum on a
sunny day. See the Patterns and
Form page for more.
Patterns, both purposeful, in
the facade of buildings, and accidental, in 'fractal
cloudscapes' and jumbled branches, stand out. As clean, ordered
buildings combine with the seemingly 'chaotic disregard' of
their surrounding nature, the resulting pictures can be
compelling.
The example to the right is of
the facade of the Marriott Hotel at West India Quay against a
fractal cloudscape. In a standard visual this would have been
lost in a mass of grey detail.
Although fascinating and
potentially a very useful artistic tool, Infra-red imagery has
many limitations. Even state of the art kit limits the user to a
fixed field of view and, with the top of the range camera used,
a resolution of just 640 by 480 pixels. The standard heat-color
spectrums that are offered are also aesthetically limited, in
that they are aimed at assisting engineers to complete their
tasks, rather than to make beautiful pictures. Future
experiments on the images captured will include attempts to
shift the heat-color spectrums in the pictures to more
naturalistic and therefore attractive colors.
This page is for building
images of a general interest. The 'people and transport';
'patterns and form' and energy pages will also present an increasing
number of relevant images. Remember to hit your browser's back
button after clicking through to full sized images.
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