Incompatible Objects
Alternative proposal for Emerson's College
Location: Los Angeles, CA
This project interrogates the potential of the incompatible object in architecture. Rather than creating original forms, the design starts from a catalog of industrial objects and different families of textures that are plastified into a multivalent whole. Concepts of composition, symmetry and proportion are abandoned to engage an anti-aesthetic attitude that precludes beauty as a formal driver. The technique of collage serves to abstract the value of architectural vocabulary.
The studio operates on the premise that architecture cannot be homogeneous and congruous, but rather it is messy and crossbred. The focus is on the aesthetic dimension of architecture and the possible production of new modes of being in the world. The building should ‘work‘ in the end but not rely on functional or programmatic innovation for its justification. That is a different project with a different set of problems. The aesthetic project can be seen as the extension of a certain breed of formalism that assigns more weight to product rather than process. The program and location of the project is the same as Emerson's College in Sunset Blvd,, project recently built and designed by Morphosis.
Departing from recent characterizations of architectural heterogeneity that promote the simultaneous identification of the whole and the constituent parts to differing degrees, as well as a rethinking of conventional part-to-part and part- to-whole logics, the approach exploits the potential for intrinsic and extrinsic diversity to emerge through the presence of incompatible attributes of an object or the presence of multiple partial objects that are incompatible.
Instructors: Marcelyn Gow, Florencia Pita and Ramiro Diaz Granados
Partner: Tara Costello
SCI-Arc // Fall 2013
