The visual world is about an individual's perception or understanding, while one unfolds the concepts of visual phenomenon multiple unknown characters come to fore. The realization of these changes is accredited to elapse of time and cognition of brain and eye. There are multiple layers involved in visual perception for knowing the intended phenomenon.
In the first layer the characters are neutral and unidentified on the given picture plane. They create what is called the retinal images in the back of the eye. Once the brain registers these fragments in each other's proximity it is able to recognize the image as whole. The recognition may also be accredited to historicizing.
The essence of visual perception lies in the analysis of the view; this could be in either of the following two ways; exploring the real from the created illusions or experiencing the overall space by getting integrated within, through the view. For a writer experiencing is the most important is well said by Maurice Merleau-Ponty; “How would the painter or poet express anything other than his encounter with the world?”1
For a writer of any field, experiencing what they write would be their practical knowledge. It plays the role of chemistry or biology laboratory. Similarly in architecture understanding human perceptions needs personal experiencing. Knowing that visual perception has multiple phenomenons to display, minimum number of structures studied could not be less than two and considering the factor of laboratory backup to my thesis (as I would call it), It was ideal for them to be located on Ohio State University campus.
The cases studies carried out during the Thesis; explore the multiple layers of perception that happen in the structures. Peter Eisenman's Wexner Center of 1989 is probably one of his unintentional design that envelopes the optical illusion phenomenon of visual perception in it very artistically. The structure is one that functionalists might refute but experientialists would support. They would also support Mack Scogin Merill Elam Architects' Knowlton School of Architecture of 2004 which identifies Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology it its spatial quality.
1 - Pallasma, Juhani. The eyes of the skin: Architecture and the Senses, Touching the World. Great Britain, TJ international