Objects by Architects Vol. 2

OBJECTS BY ARCHITECTS VOL. 2

CURATED BY SARAH HIRSCHMAN September 19 - October 23, 2012

The Keller Gallery MIT Department of Architecture

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Exhibition Design and Curation Sarah M. Hirschman Exhibition Team Mariel Villeré Clay Andersen David Costanza Exhibition Documentation Judith M. Daniels, SA+P Irina Chernyakova Special Thanks Nader Tehrani Sarah M. Hirschman James Harrington MIT Architecture Photographs courtesy of the designer unless otherwise noted

The Keller Gallery at MIT Architecture Room 7-408, MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139-2307 Series Editor Irene Hwang Volume Editor Mariel Villeré Assistant Editors Elizabeth Yarina Nathan Friedman Publisher SA+P Press Cambridge, MA 02013 Design TwoPoints.Net Printer Agpograf Contact SA+P Press Room 7-337, MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139-2307 ISBN 978-0-9836654-3-4 ©2013 SA+P Press, All Rights Reserved Front Cover Scraplight by Graypants Photograph © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

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Volume Two Contents

Objects by Architects An Introduction by Sarah M. Hirschman . . . . . . 05 Incorporated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 09 Nervous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Graypants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Deger Cengiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Work in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Between Paint & Paper: Remaking the Bauhaus Object by Christianna Bonin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Work in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Lightexture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Fiyel Levent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Chiaozza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 MOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Cheryl Baxter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Objects by Architects was presented in the Keller Gallery from September 19 - October 23, 2012.

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Above: Involution Pendant by Lightexture Below: Paper Light by Fiyel Levent, Ivy Coatrack System

by MOS Objects by Architects in the Keller Gallery; Photographs © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

OBJECTS BY ARCHITECTS II SARAH M. HIRSCHMAN

The Objects by Architects show opened the second year of programming in the Keller Gallery at MIT Architecture.

The first year was an experiment in inventing process and procedure, in figuring out what the gallery should be and for whom, how it should operate. Along with the thorny issues of exhibiting architecture, the fact of being in a school, of being in the highly trafficked center of a school, meant not only a kind of academic endorsement for exhibitions, but also a curious, critical, and engaged audience. Objects by Architects was a first step, curatorially, outside the walls of MIT, to gather a collection of work for display that had never been assembled before, and which didn’t represent the work of a single architect.

So what does an exhibition of architecture usually look like?

Photographs, drawings, videos, maybe a series of models or a large room-sized one; prototypes, field tests, even sitespecific installations work. Unlike the direct relationship of work to viewer that art typically enjoys, the exhibition of architecture is at least once removed from the work in situ: it provides a portal, but not a presence. Objects, on the other hand, are display and presence, with allusions or references secondary. Visitors know all about how to approach an object in a store—pick it up, turn it over, feel its weight, check the price tag. The fact of many of the objects being simultaneously available for purchase online was an unexpected issue.

Would we be offering links to the purchase pages on our website? No. Would we be selling the objects in the exhibition at the end as a kind of benefit? No. It was the murkiness of the relationship between architecture, art, and design in these cases, and the looming cloud of commerce that made the exhibition’s design challenging, but also strangely familiar.

With the shift to objects for this exhibition, the gallery’s conceptual distance was immediately collapsed—each item shown, whether it was the one-off prototype NUM NUM Flatware from NADAAA or the produced-in-volume Scraplight from Graypants, was cast as itself and available for inspection. Because the definition of object in this show was so broad, finely wrought 3-D printed prototypes carried the same weight as something off of a production line. Without representations or interpretations, there is also the risk of producing a false sense of completeness. For all of their 5

different stories of conception and production, none of the pieces in the exhibition were produced with gallery display in mind, so objects like the Polyester Fiber Containers by Moorhead and Moorhead, despite the really innovative and exciting material research they represent, could be easily overlooked on a quick glance through the room. The simplicity of those pieces belies the complicated process by which a homogenous material is made to have multiple structural and material properties. More than creating an environment to show off the objects, the challenge of designing this exhibition was in emphasizing the invisible qualities that make each object unique, to leave room for each piece to tell its own story.

There is no doubt that there are professional designers, people who know the ins and outs of lamps and the complicated trajectories of ergonomics, production, and distribution.

Objects by Architects does not contend that there should be any override of this, just that there can be a productive disconnect when knowledge of one field is brought into another.

Indeed, in the one-off nature of some of the objects, it provides a counterpoint to and a willfully ignorant refusal of it, one that knows it doesn’t fit into that distribution cycle, one that is suspended in disbelief. Freed from the conventions of a field, something interesting starts to happen. In many cases, new tools are being used and new channels of distribution are being tested. While the Lerival example follows a relatively straightforward production and sales scheme, some of the other objects in the show represent wholly new ways of participating in an object economy, even on a mass scale. A piece like Fiyel Levent’s Hanging Paper Light makes use of lasercutting to manipulate lighting effects with pattern, and the collapse of production processes involved allow Levent to control the process. The A-Frames by Terri Chiao and Adam Frezza (Eternity Stew at the time, now Chiaozza), one-off handmade prototypes in the exhibition, circumvented a traditional path to distribution only months later by being sold directly by the producers on the design website Fab.com. Precisely because Chiaozza was not designing for mass-production, and because their pieces reside in a kind of hybrid space between object, art, and architecture, were they able to leapfrog all the old barriers to entry for design and sell directly to their users.

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One-offs aren’t exclusively the province of art, however.

Though quantity is an essential aspect of commercial design, it’s precisely not the point in many of the exhibited cases that serve as proofs of concept or material research. Rael San Fratello’s Bevel Bowl illustrates the firm’s experiments with 3-D printing using wood dust as a matrix—the bowl itself is a tool in discovering the material and structural properties of this new composite. Similarly, Meejin Yoon’s Winesock was produced as an informal gift (or gift-wrapping) for a friend without ambitions for repeating the design. The use of felt,

however, and the novel manipulation of the piece’s form with simple stitched lines are easy to read for larger architectural and material implications.

For some practices, the object’s status is almost micro-architectural; a kind of scaled-down architecture that works in tandem with their traditional design practice. For FTF Studio, there is a direct relationship between architecture and the objects it encloses, so their milled Corian Umami Trays are in conversation with a larger family of environmental choices.

Their coffee tables, trays, and dishes are designed to exist in an ecosystem of consistent details. Similarly, Atelier Manferdini’s Blossom shares a set of geometric and pattern-based preoccupations with the rest of the firm’s work. The container uses fine materials to address an audience in a different way.

MOS’s IVY Coatrack System, though small and affordable, fits in nicely with the family of priorities the firm promotes and allows a user to participate in the design of their own constellation of parts. The founders of Graypants worked with available cast-off cardboard to create their first sculptural Scraplight during the recession and as the economy picked up, they had a viable company and name recognition that would allow them to pursue larger projects.

While many of the pieces in the show were designed as side projects for architecture firms looking to test or play, others are the result of more commercial paths and were designed explicitly to be sold in quantity. Barbara Flanagan’s Tower of Clips, a simple and clean tabletop object for securing small items, is sold at MoMA design stores and has been in production for years. Her narrative of sourcing the parts for her piece illustrates problems that smaller-scale or experimental producers would never encounter. Yung Ho Chang with his firm Atelier FCJZ embraces the intricacies of designing for production and with history in his Hulu Tableware. The pieces evoke gourds traditionally used in food preparation when assembled together in their storage structure, but are made of fine porcelain. Initially circumventing traditional fabrication structures, Josh Jakus was so unexpectedly successful with sales of his UM Tote that he developed a fabrication company and rolled out additional pieces in his line as a result, struggling to keep up with demand.

Nervous System’s Orbicular Lamp is in an interesting space when discussing the static nature of designs for quantity because each of their lamps is in fact unique, though they are sold in volume. Because the lamps are 3-D printed, and not cast in a mold or cut with a die, each one can have a slightly different network of structural veins developed using a parametric algorithm. A number of pieces in the exhibition were 3-D printed, though unlike with the Orbicular Lamp, these are often made as prototypes or tests to understand form and structure. For a piece like the Branch Table by Incorporated Architecture and Design, rapid prototyping was used in

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concert with a formal algorithm, allowing the table to be fully designed and fabricated with the help of computer tools. For the NUM NUM Flatware by NADAAA, it’s not just 3-D printing that helps in the design process, it’s the advanced materials and finishes that are now available for it. Being able to feel the weight and balance of the individual pieces in their final burnished material means that there will be no surprises should a final production run begins.

Cheryl Baxter puts it eloquently when she describes her ambitions with the Google Earth Quilt and throughout her practice as “distilling broad ideas into tangible pieces as a way to look at them differently.” She uses the language of quilting, textile logics of stitch and applique, to render strange the ubiquity of aerial imagery and the geometric continuity of grids across scales. Just down the hall from the Keller Gallery in the Fabrication Lab is a collection of tools that can produce just about anything. Emphasizing the usable object, as opposed to the architectural prototype or sample detail, in this exhibition was an important way to engage with the academic community and to empower students who are already playing with these issues on their own time. Though architecture might be the main event in these halls, the array in Objects by Architects is a reminder that designers can find satisfaction and meaningful research at all scales. Objects can be more than novelties; they are testing grounds and channels for communication.

An exhibition of similarly-sized objects (an initial parameter was that nothing be ‘bigger than a breadbox’) makes for strange shelf-fellows. Objects, and our familiarity with buying, arranging, and using them, allow for allegiances that design at a larger scale often prevents. Beyond a loose linking of designers to architectural education, there was nothing universal about the objects in this show. While we sought to downplay those differences in favor of the commonalities at first, it turns out that what’s strange is ultimately most interesting. That Stanley Saitowitz’s Menorah, part of the larger commissioned suite of Judaica he reimagined using modern lines and fine materials, existed in conversation with Lightexture’s Involution Pendant, which can be adjusted just like a vegetable steamer, molo’s Tea Lantern and Float Glassware, which provokes a kind of lighting/warming ritual for its users, Nervous System’s Orbicular Lamp, which throws eerie shadows with its blue-toned light, and Deger Cengiz’s Wooden LED Light, designed using castaway parts from around the studio, initiates a chain of association and relativity that would be impossible in a traditional architectural show and hopefully ignited the interest of viewers. In all respects other than physical, these objects exist in different universes, milieux. Objects by Architects used physicality to get everyone in the room.

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INCORPORATED BRANCH TABLE, 2009

Incorporated takes an integrated, multidisciplinary approach.

While most of the studio members have an architecture or interior design education, their backgrounds also include engineering, programming, and fine arts. They say that “Education is an ongoing process and any new interest is quickly brought into the practice and mined for its design implications.” The practice demonstrates a larger thread of exploring the idea of the “endless.” In the majority of their creative explorations, the “endless” is realized as a modular piece, each with its own function but with a form that locks together with the others. In the branching pieces (the Branch Table and its cousins, the Branch Chair and Branch Truss) along with the Hemlock House designed around the same time, this exploration is taken another route, one of variation in form to produce a variation in function or structure. While each tree is unique, as a forest, the branch objects show endless possibilities.

A small side table, each branch table is unique, grown from the endless possibilities of a stochastic branching algorithm.

While they made the piece primarily for their own research, they held hope that others would like it. Started as a research project in conjunction with the Stevens Institute of Technology without any particular audience or client in mind, it was a collaborative design with a number of people in and out of the office taking various parts. The goal was to develop a formal algorithm exploring the inherent structural ideas of a tree. In true experimental exploration, Incorporated recounts, “We were doing it for the fun of exploring the idea and seeing what applications might be possible. A table was the clearest realization that could be built.”

Branch Table was the first test and prototype of the branching algorithm, but they had intended from the beginning to use the algorithm in a number of applications and many early iterations were explored digitally before the table was fabricated. The object begins its life as a series of test runs of the branching algorithm to develop a library of possible trees.

From there a little digital modeling prepares the base to be 3-D printed. Once the algorithm was complete, they continued to experiment digitally with a number of possible objects, from chairs to trusses but settled on developing the branch table in-house as the first prototype of the system.

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It was the first entirely digitally generated object the firm has done and it verified that validity of the approach. For such a unique object, the process of its fabrication is purposely very generic and flexible. 3-D printing is the only feasible process to produce the different variations in design, and so the file is sent to a 3-D printing service (at any number of locations around the world) to be printed and finished and then shipped wherever needed. The top of the table is simple acrylic, cut and polished to order from a local New York plastics supplier, but this too can be sourced from any number of locations.

However, this is all still hypothetical, the branch table is not marketed but instead considered purely research and design for the office’s conceptual work. The initial prototype was kept simple with a raw finish, direct from the 3-D printer, registering the process through which it was fabricated. Incorporated has long considered alternative materials including chrome and metallic plating, but are waiting for the right moment for these ideas to come to fruition.

MV

Are you an architect?

INC. Most of us at Incorporated are trained in architecture and a number of us are licensed architects. While most of our work is architecture and interior design, both those disciplines touch on so much more. We are interested in it all.

MV How do you describe your design style/philosophy?

How has it evolved?

INC. Having executed residential buildings, hotels, restaurants, galleries, stores and privates residences, we approach a chair, a room and a superstructure all equally, drawing inspiration from the constraints of each. Portraiture is a metaphor for how we work. By approaching each project as a distinct subject, to be focused through our design lens, we fashion tailored designs that capture the unique desires of our clientele. By thoughtfully filtering the ideas that flow through our open studio, we implement a design Darwinism, bringing a refined aesthetic to a wide range of projects.

MV

Do you make any other objects?

INC. We are interested in all scales and all types of objects. While Incorporated has mostly designed buildings and spaces, we have also designed and have had fabricated lights, plumbing fixtures and a variety of furniture. We love chairs and creating a branch chair was an early idea for the algorithm, however we chose to initially pursue a structurally simpler table as a proof of concept for the algorithm.

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Above: Photograph Š Judith M. Daniels, SA+P 11

Above: Experiments in the algorithm in 2-D Center: Early renderings of 3-D system Below: Two Hyphae lamps

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NERVOUS SYSTEM ORBICULAR LAMP, 2011

The Orbicular Lamp is a one-of-a-kind 3-D-printed nylon lampshade with an LED light fixture. The lamp is the latest in a series of designs and experiments based on leaf venation that Nervous System has been pursuing since 2010. Its intricate design is “grown” in a computer simulation of how veins form in leaves. Working through code, most of the testing and development was performed entirely in the computer.

Nervous System recounts the scientific beginnings of the project: In early 2010, Jesse read a paper by Jagla in PLOS Computational Biology proposing a novel model for how veins form in leaves. The paper proposed that these intricate structures arise not by purely biological controls but through a physically based mechanism that is similar to how cracks form in an expanding surface to release tension. We found this paper interesting and it lead us on a literature search that resulted in us reading dozens of other scientific papers on leaf venation. Similar to most other topics in biological pattern formation where the processes being studied are often impossible to study due to their physical scale, time scale and sensitivity, no one really knows why leaf veins form the way they do. But the theory that sounds most plausible and computationally tractable to us is called Auxin Flux Canalization. The theory ascribes the differentiation of some cells into veins to the flow of the plant growth hormone auxin, which is produced at the tip of a growing leaf and flows away down the stem. There’s a positive feedback mechanism between where it flows and its ability to flow in the future. In a way, you can think of it like water progressively digging a trench where the trenches are cells that become veins.

We started our project by implementing an algorithm in Processing (a programming language and environment based on Java) described in a paper by Adam Runions from the Algorithmic Botany Group as a simplification of the Auxin Flux canalization theory. Playing with the algorithm lead us to develop our own unique simulations that played with the proposed mechanism in ways that a scientist wouldn’t. We weren’t interested in precisely mimicking existing leaves but instead exploring the range of forms creatable by the 13

system and situations not possible in nature like growths with multiple stems, systems of varying density of hormone sources, and different “flows” of hormone. Ultimately, we become interested in extending this 2-dimensional simulation into 3-D. We developed Hyphae, a software design system written in C++ to “grow” venation structures in 3-D. We found surface growths to be quite interesting as the venation algorithm produced variable results on surfaces of different curvature.

We designed a collection of 3-D-printed jewelry exploiting the structural properties of the system (it can produce strong structures using very little material) to create affordable pieces.

One of our main interests with using generative systems and digital fabrication to create products is that it enables the production of one-of-a-kind designs. This led us to create several collections of lamps each a unique result of the growth process we devised. The Orbicular lamp is one of these series. We grow a bubbly base surface for each lamp by aggregating spheres of different radii into a cone of space that represents the beam angle of our LED light fixtures.

Then we “grow” the venation network on this surface. The resulting lamps are each distinct instances of the Hyphae system.

Once Nervous System arrived at a generative design system that produced something 3-D-printable, they created many renderings simulating the effect of lighting up different “growths” with LEDs before finalizing the forms in the Orbicular series. The lamps are 3-D-printed in nylon by SLS (selective laser sintering). After the lamp’s geometry is generated, it is uploaded to Shapeways.com, who handles the printing. Approximately 2 weeks after that, they receive the printed lamp shades in their Somerville, MA studio, where they spray coat them with a clear plastic coating that protects them from UV light degradation and install the LED fixtures.

Their studio is organized around the idea of sharing and funding their ideas and research through the production and sale of products. After several years of producing hundreds of 3-D-printed objects, the group has developed the intuition for what will or will not work. Their other Hyphae related projects reflect the same itinerant process.

MV inform

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Are you an architect? How does your education your practice?

NS I (Jessica) studied Biology and Architecture at MIT and the Harvard Graduate School of Design but I don’t consider myself an architect. Jesse studied Math at MIT and used to work at Gehry Technologies doing building design

This page: Orbicular Lamp as displayed in the Objects by Architects exhibition at MIT Architecture Photograph Š Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

automation but he never studied architecture. So, no, we aren’t architects.

Jessica and Jesse both completed coursework in Computer Science. Architecture, Biology, Math and Computer Science have somehow been applied in our design studio where we mashup techniques from computer graphics, architecture and science into products.

MV How do you market your object? How do you price your object?

NS The Orbicular lamp is for sale on our website. Since each lamp is unique we generate them in batches. Each receives a edition number is and listed on our website with a rendering. Once ordered we 3-D-print the lamp on demand.

The lamp prices are based on the volume of material used in each lamp (variable since each is different) and the cost of the LED light fixtures used.

MV

Why not a chair?

NS

Good luck making an affordable 3-D-printed chair.

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Above: Scraplight pendant; Photograph Š Irina Chernyakova

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GRAYPANTS SCRAPLIGHT, 2008

“Dream, scribble, make.” This studio saying guides the work through detail manipulation, production and distribution, but Graypants is consistent in their ideology to design responsibly and to have fun. Graypants was founded by Alan, John and Seth because they loved to create across scales and by hand.

As a reprieve from the computer screen, they started with building a chair and helping friends with other projects. They still design and make for their friends and family, but hope that others likewise desire the things that are useful to those they know.

The Scraplight pendant light fixture is made from locally sourced repurposed cardboard boxes, lasercut and hand laminated. Now working on custom projects all over the map and “wacky design competitions,” from art-based to mainstream, they usually have at least one ongoing architecture project either as designers or consultants. They are sustained by constant exploration and the diverse work they engage in.

Having started as a small effort between partners, the team has grown to a production studio in Seattle for North American sales. In 2012, Graypants launched a second studio in Amsterdam to facilitate European production and sales.

They haven’t stopped with the Scraplight. “We make all sorts of crazy objects!” says John. The work ranges from conceptual proposals to product design, architecture, and beyond.

MV How do you test the object? Were there prototypes and earlier iterations?

GP This particular pendant is a custom iteration of our best selling product, so there have been literally hundreds of prototypes covering a vast range of possibilities. Testing has always been an intense process.

MV How do you market your object? How do you price your object?

GP For the most part, we’ve chosen to work directly with architects and interior designers to market our products and use them directly in projects like restaurants, offices, and homes. This allows us to cut out a lot of people in the middle, which keeps our pricing reasonable, and custom work a possibility.

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DEGER CENGIZ WOODEN LED LIGHT, 2010

Starting with scrap copper plumbing pipes and a chunk of wood left over from another design project, Cengiz developed the design for this desk lamp built with “ordinary low technology materials and a new technology LED bulb.” He describes it as a primitive object with some added electronics. After having fabricated the original prototype, his interns were put to work in making multiple. He typically tests all of his made objects with friends, gifting the prototypes and asking for feedback. After incorporating the test feedback into the design, he markets the objects in New York retail stores and through design blog features.

Opposite: Wooden LED; Photograph © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

Cengiz considers his practice along an axis of exploration, critically informed by his education and motivated by a customer/client base of those who appreciate fine arts and good design.

These criteria take the designs in different directions, perhaps seemingly disconnected.

Another project, titled Selfish & Devoted, is a flowerpot-watering can apparatus as a love story. Repurposed from garden supplies and a custom connection, this particular design is offered as a limited edition.

MV

How are your materials chosen?

DC I mostly use the materials that somehow cross my path. And if I search for the appropriate materials, I prefer the ones ethically good for our planet and the humanity.

MV How do you describe your design style/philosophy? How has it evolved?

DC I believe design should be humane, ethical, and thoughtful. It has evolved through the years, from more esthetic oriented to more environment centered.

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This page, above: Selfish & Devoted, by Deger Cengiz This is about a love story between the flower pot and the watering can, who does not want to share the water she gets with anyone else and who is not interested in giving water to anyone else besides his lover.

The watering can and the flower pot are purchased from a gardening retailer. I took a piece of sheet metal and metal scissors, and cut a connection element for those two. I keep exploring the possibilities on design; so even it does not look like my previous work, it is still a continuation of my explorations. - Deger Cengiz

This page, below: Flexible Dino Lamp Opposite: Objects by Architects, installed at the Keller Gallery; Photograph Š Irina Chernyakova

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BETWEEN PAINT AND PAPER: REMAKING THE BAUHAUS OBJECT CHRISTIANNA BONIN

‘Do you notice anything, about the walls, I mean?’

‘They’re very high,’ said Müller.

Kampert’s wife laughed again. But Kampert said, quite sachlich: ‘I meant that there aren’t any pictures there. Most people hang their walls as full as poster hoardings. My position is that if a man doesn’t have a separate room for pictures, then he should simply skip them.’

-Bertolt Brecht, North Sea Crabs or The Modern Bauhaus Apartment, 1927

Positioned above two awkwardly small gray doors in a main stairwell, the radiator shown in this image was one of just three objects permanently installed high on the walls of the Bauhaus School Building when it opened in 1926 in Dessau, Germany. (Fig. 1) The other two objects— also silver-painted, cast iron radiators—were mounted upon the back wall of the experimental art and design school’s theater. Accessible only with a stepladder, and stationed at a most impractical height for a heat-emitting object, the radiators have remained conspicuous in their curious alternation between being one thing and acting as another. That is, they could be viewed easily but only used inconveniently.

In a way, of course, that was the point.

Ubiquitous as central heating is today, such radiators in 1926 reified the Bauhaus School’s interest in new, technological modes of production. Hoisted onto prominent wall space, the radiators also broadcasted the School’s collaboration with the Dessau Junkers Airplane Factory, which manufactured many of the Bauhaus Building’s iron or steel elements. But with their physical elevation, from beneath windows, up to walls, and into a viewer’s line of sight, the radiators also lost much of their functionality. One radiator could not even be attached to the building’s central piping. In turn, the radiators defied what was then standard display practice in art and design academies: garnishing the walls with framed paintings.

In the Bauhaus Building, radiators became

Christianna Bonin is a Ph.D. student in MIT’s History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program.

She holds an M.A. from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art (2012) and a B.A. summa cum laude from Amherst College (2007). From 2008 through 2010, she worked at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in Dessau, Germany as a translator and curatorial assistant. Her current research interests include the institutional construction of culture during the Cold War and the dynamics of postSoviet urban transition.

Opposite, Figure 1: Bauhaus Stairwell, Bauhaus Building, Dessau, Germany. Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

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aesthetic objects by occupying the wall space conventionally allocated to autonomous art objects. Our topic, the conflicted status of the painted “art” object in modernist architecture, stems from the simple supposition that these radiators offered a good deal more than heat in 1926.

For decades, we have heard that many Bauhäusler desired— and ultimately failed during the school’s brief, thirteenyear existence—to unify artistic practice with burgeoning technologies, and to dispense the built environment of ostensibly “useless” aesthetic objects. Creative practitioners strove to create living spaces in which architecture and material accessory were indistinguishable. They endeavored to design new, functional objects contingent on human needs.1 We also have read of a pervasive vulnerability in avant-garde circles of the Weimar Republic: that promoting the mechanical and technological also encouraged the fetishizing of machines and technologies.2 In the case of the silver-painted radiators, Bauhäusler poised the objects to represent the technological—on terms, one may argue, that isolated the objects from their production and patterns of use. In part, the radiators assumed of the status of a venerated object—much like the ‘conventional’ framed paintings that many Bauhäusler had deemed counterproductive in their polemics.

There remains, however, another way of looking at the attempts made by Bauhäusler to overcome the singular painting with machines and technologies. That is, by examining the transforming practice of painting itself at the Bauhaus. Notice the yellow ceiling and gray and white walls in the above image: the Bauhaus’s wall painting workshop and Hinnerk Scheper, who held the longest tenure as workshop master from 1925-33, designed and executed the polychrome plans. Indeed, it has become so pervasive to think the histories of Bauhaus design through the School’s obsession with new technologies and the industrial production of objects that it is easy to overlook the ideas and work of practitioners that continued to use paint. This brief essay considers how and why some Bauhäusler challenged the categorical distinction between unique, autonomous art object and the built space of architecture—offering us a longer historical view of some of the issues raised through Objects by Architects.

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Making this argument requires a look to the reform discourse around artistic and architectural practice that emerged in Weimar and Berlin just after World War I. The 1919 Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art), a group of architects and artists that included the Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, issued directives about the future form and purpose of creative practices.3 Overwhelmingly, the council

advocated that creative practices be unified in a synthesized, transformative architectural project that ought to reflect burgeoning collective society. In the group’s 1919 publication, Ja! Stimmen des Arbeitsrates für Kunst (Yes! Voices of the Working Council for Art), conditions were set. Painting was imagined in the commentaries by the architects Adolf Behne and Gropius as something integral to the polychrome interiors of buildings rather than a distinct canvas that could be bought and sold. The practitioner— particularly the artist painter—should become anonymous. The frames of paintings ought to be “exploded”, as Behne put it.4 This “explosion” of the painting’s frame, however, became a “framing of the artwork in architecture” according to Gropius. Uniting the practices, “art” would again be filled with the “architectonic spirit” it had lost when it became “a luxury item for the salons of the wealthy,” when ornament seeped into the objects of daily life and suppressed their function. Gropius’s words for the portable, framed artwork were strong: “Dying away from its true life among civilized peoples, art had to flee to exhibition halls and prostitute itself there. An artwork no longer has its decided, hallowed place in the midst of the people, but has now become free as a bird…”5 In this gendered language, the synthesis of the arts also meant simultaneous subservience to an architectural project. It meant the dissolution of the individual, autonomous artist and the painted art object into a collective project, which in turn, would entwine the supposedly ‘useless’ art object with the needs of human society.

Gropius and Behne were not alone in expressing such lofty goals. Over a decade earlier, in 1904, the Austrian art critic Julius Meier-Graefe argued that art sales at exorbitant prices and greedy collectors had distanced art objects physically and intellectually from the masses.

For Meier-Graefe, who was well known in Berlin’s creative circles, the art object’s mobility meant it was doomed to commerciality and a mere superficial status on the wall of an elite’s house. “In the form to which it is confined today—that of a picture or statue, a marketable commodity—it could only exercise an influence by fulfilling the purpose of other marketable things: that of being purchased.” Rather, “the painted or carved image,” he proclaimed, “is in its nature immovable.”6 For Meier-Graefe, to connect artistic practice with human society,

1. Many Bauhaus objects, if functional or technologically innovative, were far from affordable and widely available in the early 1920s.

For one, a silver teapot from the Bauhaus cost 90 marks—the approximate weekly income of a workingclass family in 1927. Even today, many of the objects designed at the Bauhaus are still manufactured and sold at hefty price tags. The literature on Bauhaus objects and the utopic goals of Bauhaus practitioners is extensive.

On authorship and identity, see Jeffrey Saletnik and Robin Schuldenfrei, Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and Modernism (Routledge, 2009). See also Robin Schuldenfrei, “Luxus, Produktion, Reproduktion,” in Mythos Bauhaus : zwischen Selbsterfindung und Enthistorisierung (Reimer, 2009), 74–75.

2. Frederic Schwarz analyzes and theorizes the status of the Sache as both contingent on human needs and fetishized in the writings of the German architect Adolf Behne in Frederic J Schwartz, “Form Follows Fetish: Adolf Behne and the Problem of ‘Sachlichkeit’,” Oxford Art Journal 21, no. 2 (1998): 47–77.

3. Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Berlin), Ja!: Stimmen des Arbeitsrates für Kunst in Berlin. (Charlottenburg: Photographische Gesellschaft, 1919).

4. Adolf Behne, in Ibid., 14–15, 100–101.

5. Walter Gropius in Ibid., 32.

6. Julius Meier-Graefe, Florence Simmonds, and George William Chrystal, Modern Art: Being a Contribution to a New System of Æsthetics (London; New York: William Heinemann ; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 10.

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the portable, saleable art object must be stabilized. It must be “governed by the law of the place that contained it” rather than “its own laws.”7 At least in part, then, the goal was to make the unruly art object a function of the needs of a social totality rather a commodity alienated from society at large.8 Consider the above commentary as part of the conceptual scaffolding to the Bauhaus’s wall painting workshop. In 1918, when the Weimer Bauhaus opened and the young Hinnerk Scheper enrolled to commence study in the workshop under the painters Johannes Itten, and a few years later, Oskar Schlemmer and Wassily Kandinsky, he joined a project that was invested (at least rhetorically) in exploring the multifarious possibilities of paint when applied directly to architectural interiors. But if Scheper and many of his colleagues at the Bauhaus shared this goal, achieving it in practice was more complicated that slathering store-bought paint onto walls. The wall painting workshop members tested the interaction of painting and architecture in perceptual, phenomenological, and programmatic ways, all of which at times sprouted bitter exchanges. At the heart of the debates often lay issues of autonomy and agency. Could collaboration and parity among architects, buildings, painters, and color plans be achieved in commissions? More abstractly, ought color be distinct of form?

Although the wall painting workshop ranked among the Weimar Bauhaus’s largest workshops, its members initially received few commissions. Indeed, conceiving and executing a wall painting plan for a building was time-consuming and costly for clients. Often, wall paint was applied only after a fresco style lime-based primer coated the walls. This process ensured a smooth, firm surface and brilliant colors. Wooden surfaces were all pre-oiled and painted with resin oil colors, while walls and ceilings were also sometimes painted with glue-based paint. Each commission was also site-specific: it entailed mixing certain paints as well as exploring a building’s usage, structural makeup, lighting, and proportions. The uniqueness of the wall paintings, their specificity to a certain built context, held appeal to some. But it also made wall paintings prohibitively expensive to most of the working and middle classes.9

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One of the Bauhaus’s few wall painting commissions in the early 1920s was the city of Jena’s municipal theater.

The school was hired in 1921 to renovate the building.

Although the theater no longer exists, the debates among the Bauhäusler over its wall paintings are well documented.

Oskar Schlemmer, the master of the wall painting workshop at the time of the commission, developed a wall painting plan that Gropius ultimately had removed. According to the Bauhaus student Andor Weininger, Schlemmer’s design for the Jena Theater diverged from its task of preparing a viewer to enter the theater: Schlemmer created “a wonderful

checkerboard pattern in different colors…” but “a sensation of uneasiness” stemmed from the fact that Schlemmer’s “draft suggested several surfaces” while the building in fact constituted “a ceiling in one surface and in one color.”10 Instead, Gropius opted for solid paint colors that followed the forms of the architecture.

“Terracotta colored stairways led to the second balcony, whose balustrades were done in grey.

The theater hall itself was reddish in the middle and grey on the front walls. The deep-blue stage curtain corresponded to the balcony floor across from it.”11 For his part, Schlemmer expressed commitment to wall painting and collaboration with architects. In his journal that same year, he also criticized the painter Paul Klee’s appointment to the Bauhaus. Klee, Schlemmer scoffed, was of the “art-for-art’ssake, divested-of-any-purpose type.”12 These accounts are anecdotal, of course.

But the dissent around the Jena project emphasizes that already, in 1921, there was little agreement over how and to what extent a wall painter ought to blend his or her work with an architectural program. At the controversy’s core resides a nascent debate over what many scholars now consider a modernist artistic paradigm. As Douglas Crimp has argued, “the idealism of modernist art, in which the art object in and of itself was seen to have a fixed and transhistorical meaning, determined the object’s placelessness…site-specificity opposed that idealism….by its refused circular mobility, its belongingness to a specific site.”13 Conceived for a particular place, Schlemmer’s wall painting for Jena would have also been materially bound to the theater. But for Gropius, it remained conceptually distinct and obstinately autonomous rather than program-specific.

It may have been possible to ‘fix’ painting, physically binding it to a site by removing frames and material supports. But its identity refused such simple alignment.

When he began directing the workshop in 1925, Hinnerk Scheper would address the problem of the wall painting’s identity; ought it render itself to architecture, to program, to its author, or to simply itself? He did so with Gropius’s good will. “Scheper is,” Gropius wrote confidently in Scheper’s diploma a few years prior, “by his own means and abilities, completely and fully able to envision the correct spirit of a building through

7. Julius Meier-Graefe, Florence Simmonds, and George William Chrystal, Modern Art: Being a Contribution to a New System of Æsthetics, 21-23.

8. Schwartz also describes this concern over the commodity status of the object and the alienated human subject. See Schwartz, “Form Follows Fetish,” 65, 74.

9. For more information about Hinnerk Scheper at the Bauhaus and beyond, see Renate Scheper, Hinnerk Scheper: Farbgestalter, Fotograf, Denkmalpfleger; vom Bauhaus geprägt (Bramsche: Rasch, 2007) and Renate Scheper and Museum für Gestaltung Bauhaus-Archiv, Farbenfroh!

Die Werkstatt Für Wandmalerei Am Bauhaus (Berlin: BauhausArchiv, 2005).

10. Weininger quoted in Barbara Happe, Haus Auerbach von Walter Gropius mit Adolf Meyer = Haus Auerbach of Walter Gropius with Adolf Meyer (Tübingen; New York, N.Y., 2003), 152.

11. Ibid.

12. Letter from February 3, 1921, in Oskar Schlemmer and Tut Schlemmer, Oskar Schlemmer: Briefe Und Tagebücher (Stuttgart: Hatje, 1977), 48.

13. Douglas Crimp and Louise Lawler, On the Museum’s Ruins (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), 17. For an extensive discussion of the transforming concept of ‘sitespecificity’ between modernist art and minimalist artistic projects in the 1960s and 70s, see also Miwon Kwon, “One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity,” October 80 (1997): 85–110.

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Above, Figure 2: Bauhaus Canteen, Bauhaus Building, Dessau, Germany. Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 14. Gropius in Scheper, Hinnerk Scheper, 14. The 1922 diploma is depicted and cited in Ibid. The details on Scheper’s course of study are also drawn from this text, one of few on his body of work. Scheper has remained peripheral to most scholarship on the School’s intellectual, political, and aesthetic drives.

In fact Scheper was one of the Weimar Bauhaus’s first students, boldly leaving a course of study in at conventional Düsseldorf and Bremen Applied Arts Colleges and enrolling in 1918, the year the Bauhaus opened.

15. Hinnerk Scheper and Lou Scheper, “Architektur Und Farbe,” Maljarnoe Delo 1-2(1930): 12.

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painting.”14 Concerned with the persistent wedge between painting and architectural projects, Scheper began by creating color plans for the new Bauhaus Building that attempted to conceptualize and deploy painting as an essential, rather than subordinate, element of the entire architectural complex. Still, what mattered most, as Scheper wrote later, was that “wall painting must never be allowed to take on a life of its own, divorced from the architecture.”15 Observe the white, glossy undersides of beams in the Bauhaus Building’s cantina. (Fig. 2) They correspond with the long, glossy tables designed by Marcel Breuer, but they also articulate the load-bearing structures and non-loadbearing elements. Elsewhere, red and blue were added to the ceilings of hallways in order to demarcate similarly used spaces. In offices, bright colors appeared only on ceilings. In the drawing rooms and workshops in which paint was used, the surrounding walls were given brilliant tones. Scheper explained these decisions as “heighten[ing] the spatial effect of the colors by applying a variety of materials: slick high gloss coats of paint, glass, metal, and so on.” Wall painting would “underline inherent architectural contrasts” and “differentiate between supporting and filling spaces.”16 Simple but unique building forms were articulated through color.

While Scheper received several commissions for wall painting plans throughout the late 1920s, one of his most significant projects outside of Dessau was the Moscow Narkomfin housing project. Designed by the leading Constructivist architect Moisei Ginzburg for workers of the commissariat of Finance, Narkomfin became a space for Scheper to apply varying paints to the ceilings of stairwells and, in turn, utilize color as a means of orientation and spatial differentiation. Although each hall was identical, the doors alternated in black and white, aiding users in distinguishing their own entry from that of another. At both the Bauhaus and Narkomfin, wall painting served a subtle, guiding function.

Overall, it was conceptualized as a key element of the architectural complex.17 After considering these few examples, what linger are the unresolved exchanges among Bauhaus practitioners and the buildings and painting plans they created. Despite our tendency today to see the Bauhaus School as a coherent entity, there was in fact little consensus as to how one melded painting with architectural space. The smooth, often matte surfaces of the paint effaced individual brushstrokes, which conventionally had worked as indexical traces of the artist’s hand and signals of authorship. In turn, wall painting downplayed the importance of marks made by a single artist. Some creative practitioners understood that painting should be ‘unframed’ and linked to architectural program. Still others argued that painting could compete with architectural form and transform the viewer’s experience of built space. A wall painting might codify an architectural program or it might throw a pre-existing program through a kind of diagenesis, reassembling a spatial presentation to be perceived anew by users. Still, while each wall painting was not saleable and transferrable like a detachable, physical object, the concept ultimately was. Not bonded to any single architecture, wall paintings could still, as an idea and painting method, break loose.

––– Sometime in 1929, one of Scheper’s former students traveled to Dessau from Hannover and made a proposition that complicates the story told thus far of the painted object, the wall, and the Bauhaus. Maria Rasch was the younger sister of Emil Rasch, a former Scheper student and the successful owner of the Hannoverschen Tapetenfabrik. The factory began producing wallpaper in 1897.18 Meeting with Scheper that day, the younger Rasch proposed initiating the largescale production of wallpaper at the Bauhaus. Students would design patterns and advertisements. Scheper was cautious. So was Hannes Meyer, whom Gropius appointed as the new Bauhaus Director after he resigned in 1928. After all, it was the heart of despised decorative and historicist ornament with which Rasch was confronting these die-hard modernists: bourgeois decorative material; patterned color applied arbitrarily, superficially, uncontrollably.

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16. Scheper, quoted in, Burckhard Kieselbach, Rasch Tapetenfabrik, and Dessau Stiftung Bauhaus, Bauhaustapete: Reklame & Erfolg Einer Marke = Advertising & Success of a Brandname (Köln: DuMont, 1995), 89.

17. Monika Markgraf, “Function and Color in the Bauhaus Building in Dessau,” in Museum für Gestaltung BauhausArchiv et al., Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009), 197.

18. Wallpaper has its roots in the eighteenth century as a handpainted luxury. Mass production began in the early twentieth century, around the time of Rasch’s proposal at the Bauhaus. For more of the history of wallpaper, see Lesley Hoskins, The Papered Wall: The History, Patterns and Techniques of Wallpaper (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 6. See also Marilyn Oliver Hapgood, Wallpaper and the Artist: From Dürer to Warhol (New York: Abbeville Press, 1992).

19. For a more extensive discussion of the theoretical and structural shifts implemented

by Hannes Meyer at the Bauhaus, particularly his interest in the scientific and the technical, see Peter Galison, “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism,” Critical Inquiry 16, no. 4 (1990): 709–752; K. Michael Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject : the Architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992).

20. Hinnerk Scheper, quoted in Kieselbach, Tapetenfabrik Gebr, and Stiftung Bauhaus, Bauhaustapete: Reklame & Erfolg Einer Marke = Advertising & Success of a Brandname, 91.

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Undeterred, Rasch understood that she had timed her proposal remarkably well. As popular as the wall painting commissions were, they could not dissuade pressures for a more lucrative project. With fickle state funding, the Bauhaus School was slipping toward bankruptcy. And more so than under Gropius’s leadership, Scheper and his colleagues at Meyer’s Bauhaus were absorbed in creating affordable housing to raise living standards and produce items that even low-income families could both purchase and appreciate.

In general, Meyer had shifted the focus of the school in the direction of industry and engineering and away from an already vague interest in aesthetic creation.19 This change contributed to an atmosphere in which the production of wallpaper might have realized the goals expressed a decade earlier: to banish the singular, venerated painting by embedding it in a collective architectural project once and for all.

But at what expense? In 1955, Scheper reflected on this critical moment and recalled his fear of losing of the painted wall’s unique materiality.

Its distinct qualities and liveliness—which kept each project from being reiterative—would have been masked beneath the “Einförmigkeit der papierenen Haut,” beneath uniform sheets of papered skin.20 Scheper’s interest in wallpaper also contained an element of practicality. Surely he was well aware that he and other Bauhaus students would be unable to paint each house in the numerous working-class settlements Meyer was planning. In addition, the architect Ernst May used wallpaper in the housing settlements he planned in Frankfurt in 1925, showing that wallpaper, like wall painting, might also transmit an aesthetic and architectural program.21 But using wallpaper risked severing any sense of distinctiveness through its potentially endless reproduction of colors and patterns. Scheper and Meyer went for it.

In the first year of design and production, Scheper and his students created fourteen oil-based patterns for a collection of fifteen different colors. (Fig. 3) On one template, wavy, burnt yellow lines give texture to a lighter background of golden yellow. Not parallel, the printed lines touch in spots scattered across the sheet.

Formally, the new wallpaper was far from the arabesques of wallpapers past. Subsequent designs from the early 1930s displays delicate dots

This page, Figure 3: Page from the Stock Book “Original Patterns 1931”, Rasch Archive, Bramsche, Germany Wallpaper Samples from the first Bauhaus Wallpaper Collection, 1930.

and wood grains in pastel hues—templates that suggest their inspiration lay more in the materiality of painted walls and natural building materials than in abstract geometric shapes. From its first production run, Bauhaus wallpaper featured in annual exhibitions like the “volkswohnung” (people’s apartment) in Dessau and Leipzig.22 In the displays of small, functional living quarters, it covered walls of plywood into which beds folded to create more space. The wallpaper was wildly successful, making history as the Bauhaus’s most lucrative project.

For his part, Scheper never understood wallpaper and wall painting as identical projects. He differentiated between their uses and conceptual premises but did not prioritize one over the other.

He considered wallpaper a kind of “surface treatment” for the wall. It must transfer onto paper and into every home the “unique coloration and texture of colored plaster surfaces” painted by the Bauhaus.23 Lest one deem wallpaper too quotidian and superficial, Scheper insisted in an early 1929 advertisement in bauhaus magazine, “No ornaments, but rather the smallest patterns creating structure.”24 Wall painting, on the other

21. Juliet Kinchin also describes the start of Bauhaus wallpaper production and makes this point in Juliet Kinchin, “Wallpaper Design,” in Barry Bergdoll, Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009), 294.

22. Scheper, Hinnerk Scheper, 53.

23. Hinnerk Scheper, quoted in Kieselbach, Tapetenfabrik Gebr, and Stiftung Bauhaus, Bauhaustapete: Reklame & Erfolg Einer Marke = Advertising & Success of a Brandname, 91.

24. Hinnerk Scheper, “Untitled,” bauhaus 4, no. 3 (1929): 22.

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hand, was distinctly not a covering. Rather it revealed the ability of color to shape space.

In other words, if wall paintings, immobile Bilder (immobile images), knew where they belonged, wallpaper did not—and should not, it seems.

But the consequence was this: wallpaper made any “art” integrated with an architectural site all the more mobile and marketable yet again. It disseminated Bauhaus interiors to a burgeoning market that spanned from renters of lowerincome housing complexes to the chic, elite interior featured in Rasch’s 1931 advertisement for Bauhaus wallpaper: The Future Belongs

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Above, Figure 4: Joost Schmidt, Der Bauhaustapete gehört die Zukunft (The Future Belongs to Bauhaus Wallpaper), advertising brochure, 1931 © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Image courtesy of Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin Opposite: Four images of development of the MOS Lilly Table System

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to Bauhaus Wallpaper! it proclaims. (Fig. 4) As wall painting was imagined into and printed on textured and patterned wallpaper, it became a mass-produced object for widespread consumption.

Thinking back to the image of the silver radiators, one sees that the creative practitioners at the Bauhaus navigated a dialectical pull between creating for collective society as well as individual spaces and subjectivities. With or without the physical, three-dimensionality of the object, the wall painting and wallpaper design projects always already contained elements of the supposedly venerated, painted object and the ‘mere’ stuff of life. Neither was a clear success story. There is still work to be done.

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Below: A Cabin in a Loft,

by Chiaozza is a guest room in the vibrant artists’ neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn.

The Cabin is run out of the designers’ workshop and studio, where they also live. Many of the artworks, furniture, and objects in the space were made by Chiaozza or fellow artists and are for sale. By staying here, guests support their work as artists and designers and become part of a vast community of global travelers, curious to engage a local’s experience of the place they are visiting.

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Conceived of as houses within houses, the cabin (available for rental) and tree house (their home) serve as private sleeping cabins, each with its own semi-private garden set off from the shared living space.

Photo credit: Andreas Serna

Right: Christmas Spoons, functional and abstract utensils, carved from found wood, in this case the designers’ discarded Christmas tree.

Below: Study for an inhabitable tree housegreenhouse.

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Opposite: Production in Studio, Graypants Above: Slice Cafe and Dining Chairs, by Graypants; Three no-waste chairs are made from one sheet of plywood

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Opposite: Cheryl Baxter, A Fantastic Trailer (2012) is an architectural vehicle to create a relationship between the architect and the viewer.

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The project invites the viewer to engage with the architecture—to touch, feel, and hear it. The project is mobile, which expands the audience, but also makes one aware of the fact that it is a fleeting experience. The mobility also allows the project to be juxtaposed against different environments.

Above: Fiyel Levent with Anne Romme, the Folding White Screen (2009) CNC-milled polyethylene, steel frame

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Above: A drawing that depicts the transformation of a Steamlight wall-mount lamp opening, seen in section and plan. Credit: Yael Erel Center: An image of light textures cast by Steamlight lamps and the shadows of Yael Erel and Avner Ben Natan Photography: Avner Ben Natan and Yael Erel Below: A photographed sequence of the transformation of a four-iris field. Photography: Avner Ben Natan, construction with Laura Haak.

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LIGHTEXTURE THE INVOLUTION PENDANT, 2012

In search of a sublime aspect to space, one that is not fixed, but could transform in response to users’ desires and tendencies, Lightexture (Yael Erel, Avner Ben Natan and Sharan Elran) does not limit themselves in external definitions of style. They allow the work itself to guide them. The Involution Pendant is an adjustable light fixture. It is composed of overlapping metal leaves that create an adjustable three-dimensional aperture.

The aperture composes two opposing irises; as one opens, the other closes. Their patent for overlapping leaves as an adjustable aperture to reflect, refract and direct light, was originally used in the Steamlight lamp series, and was then evolved and elaborated with the Involution. The Steamlight lamp was first made for Lightexture themselves and based on a readymade stainless steel steamer. The aperture configuration allows for an adjustable task light for one partner, while the other is kept in relative darkness. This realization of configurability formed the belief backbone of the practice, transforming the space through lighting at the user’s will.

Lightexture has developed light fixtures, research and lighting installations over the course of their practice. The objects are tested through both physical and digital modeling. Prototypes have been made to test each incarnation of the series through geometry, location of light source, support, reflections, impact of finishes, etc. Materials are chosen based on the process of production and correlative spatial effects. In trying to reach a wide range of users, the objects are kept in as affordable as the production process allows. While designing for people who bring the objects into their homes and want to live with them, Lightexture is designing/making to externalize abstract ideas and principles into matter. The transformation of their clients’ living environments is rewarding alongside the rewards of research.

MV Did making the object change your other creative practices?

LT Yes, it changed the focus of the research of my practice, and I am processing and working through the full implications of that research on the architectural scale. Installations are a direct place to transpose research from object scale onto architectural scale, but that is only a threshold, I believe there is much to learn and translate from our research in light and objects, and that is where my current research is concentrated.

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Above: Steamlight lamp; Photograph Š Irina Chernyakova 42

MV

How does your education inform your practice?

YE I am an alumna of the Cooper Union School of Architecture. The Cooper Union is a school for engineering, science and art. I see my practice as a fluid flow between these three fields. My education thus far has been a mix of high intellectual criticality, poetic integrity and an appreciation of the necessity in clear articulation of materiality and tectonics through craft. These aspects are not limited in scale, therefore are as applicable to an object or a building.

Currently I am studying at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute— my research is the study of different aspects of light at the Lighting Research Center (the LRC, a leading lighting research facility that is part of the RPI School of Architecture), and Digital Fabrication and Computation at the RPI School of Architecture. In furthering my research into light I wish to deepen my knowledge of a material I have always loved, but considered elusive, and to sharpen my understanding of the architectural implications of our work.

MV How is the object fabricated? What is your involvement in that process? Did this change?

LT Initially in the prototyping phases, the Involution and other parts of its series were constructed from hand cut or laser-cut and hammered metal sheets. After confirming a prototype, we are currently having the metal leaves stamped (using stainless steel, copper and brass—with specular interior finish and brushed finish exterior finish). We still assemble the lamp by hand. In order to get the leaves produced we constructed our physical prototypes digitally and tested a few versions of the stamps before the leaves were finalized for production.

MV

Why not a chair?

LT A light fixture is an object, but it is also a projection that expands onto space, and transforms aspects of the perception of that space. Our research currently is located within that tension of the physical and projected, a tension that is sharpened as the object transforms, and space transforms along with it.

So, it is less about why not a chair, and more—why light?

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FIYEL LEVENT HANGING PAPER LIGHT, 2009

Inspired by the sculptures and drawings of Ruth Asawa, Levent began a series of her own ink drawings to explore patterns over 15 months on evenings and weekends. Once a collection of these drawings started to form, she wanted to make functional elements out of the motifs. Putting the laser cutter to use, she immediately scanned and cut the patterns to start experimenting.

Once in this form, she was able to realize the amazing effects of light when it played off the tiny figures on the paper.

Patterns were multiplied and combined to make a number of different lamp styles. Levent reworks the patterns for each series she makes, formats them for lasercutting, then the lasercutter burns the pattern into the paper. A full service shop, Levent also fabricates the bases and electrical components to assemble each lamp. Each object endures a long series of iterations and prototypes, constantly evolving. A new light with brass fittings and components debuted in 2013 at MADE, a subsection of the Architectural Digest Home Show.

Considered continuous with the rest of her work, Levent makes screens, fixtures from concrete, plastics, aluminum and full scale architectural installations. At the smallest scale, she makes greeting cards and note cards. She studied architecture at the Cooper Union and worked for several years at an architecture practice.

MV

How are your materials chosen?

FL The wonderful thing about having access to a carpentry and fabrication shop is that I am allowed to experiment with vastly different materials. I share the shop with another very creative studio so new ideas and new materials are constantly bounced around and developed. Sometimes a discovery of a new material effect leads to a new product or design object.

MV

Who are you designing and making for?

FL Ultimately, I do this because I love to create novel and beautiful things. I also like to see others enjoying beautiful things.

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CHIAOZZA A-FRAMES, 2011

Chiaozza is the joint practice of Terri Chiao, trained as an architect, and Adam Frezza, a fine artist/ painter/drawer/collage artist/“frustrated carpenter,” often blending painting and sculpture (NB: he is starting to drop the ‘frustrated’ prefix, as he finds pleasure in making the substrate, or the tool to make the object, like stretchers or panels for his paintings). Their work disregards disciplinary boundaries, spanning design and architecture, photography, printmaking, culinary arts, folk crafts, sculpture and building in order to address the “total environment.” While chairs are easy to come by, Terri and Adam make what is needed or desired, but not easily found.

Opposite: A-Frame at the Keller Gallery; photograph © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

Following page, left: A-Frame at the Keller Gallery; photograph © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P Following page, right: A-Frame mirror

The playful A-Frames embody their design ethos, testing craft technique, shape and color combination with each handmade iteration to find an economical balance of shape, proportions and color variations. Materials and functions associated with the everyday interest Chiaozza, as the A-Frames can take on the qualities of a sculpture, painting, or utilitarian shelves that Adam describes as a stage for the things that sit there. The shelf has started to come to the forefront as a force that “charges the objects put upon them in unique ways.” The shelves are made from bass wood, easily cut and shaped, affordable and strong. As a continuation of their experimentation, they intend to test harder woods and found materials in the future.

The matte acrylic paint finish allows the wood to have a presence. They have also sampled pigmented pickling stain in order to find what works best for each project. An extensive series of drawn patterns may inspire a variety of textile, illustration and painting projects to follow.

Their open approach to making extends to models of cabins and tree houses; sculptures (paper plants); furniture; and whittled objects made of found wood, like their old Christmas tree. A Cabin in a Loft is considered a large “model” or “inhabitable object,” as it nests within their 47

Brooklyn workspace. Their work is meant for them, their apartment, their friends, guests of the Cabin in a Loft bed & breakfast, and people who are generally curious, playful and open. They do not distinguish “building” from “making objects,” perhaps based on the scale at which they work.

MV What is the backstory for this object? Why did you make it in the first place?

C The A-Frames are an exploration into geometry, color and display in the form of functional wall objects. The shelves are inspired by a Danish folk design from the island of Amager, near Copenhagen, and are hand-cut with tradi-

tional woodworking saws. Assembled using simple wooden lap joints and no glue, the frames can be taken apart and flatpacked for transport. The shelves are hung on a nail and can be used for displaying arrangements of small objects on a wall. Shapes include variations on triangles, parallelograms, and other forms.

We were interested in making them as a sculptural wall object that was both functional and pleasing, and also for housing our various collections of small rocks, sculptures, found objects and keepsakes.

MV How is the object fabricated? What is your involvement in that process? Did this change?

C We use traditional Japanese hand saws to cut the shapes and joints, which are then sanded and painted. We’ve been using a matte acrylic paint and various types of wood stains for color. At first we kept the shapes fairly blunt, but then we started playing around with angles, curves, and sanding techniques that gave more playfulness to the frames.

We plan to continue playing with different coloring, shaping, and surfacing techniques.

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In the beginning, Terri was doing most of the wood cutting and fitting, deciding the shapes of the frames in the process.

Adam would then sand, shape and make color decisions with paint. But as the process evolves, our responsibilities meld and we are both taking on all aspects of the creation of these frames. Working together in this way helps to refine and focus our visual dialogue.

We waver between considering the A-Frames as objects with potential for mass production or as unique one-of-a-kind art objects exploring color and shape.

MV How do you test the object? Were there prototypes and earlier iterations?

C The A-Frames in the show are actually prototypes.

Since they are handmade, we have a lot of control over how they look and how they work, but there are limitations as well. We had to do a lot of sanding, taking apart, and reassembling to get them to be handleable and easier to put together by someone who had never done it before.

MV How do you market your object? How do you price your object?

C Word of mouth has really been the main exposure of this work thus far. The sharing and selling of this work feels like a natural progression of the making of the work, because at this point we are involved in every aspect of that transaction. However, pricing the work is always a challenge. On one hand, we consider these objects unique one-of-a-kind art objects, but the price tags on art with a ‘capital A’ can be exorbitant, as we all know. Right now we are more interested in accessibility. We take into account the time we spend designing and making the frames, the materials we purchase to make the frames, and the potential shipping/handling costs, and we try to come up with a price that feels comfortable.

MV How do you describe your design style/philosophy?

How has it evolved?

TC My work tends to focus on housing and inhabitation in the contemporary city and countryside. At an architectural level, I am interested in how to make “nimble spaces” that can bend, adjust, and grow with the needs of the maker/ user. At the level of “other” design and art-making, our work explores play and craft across a variety of media, particularly influenced by the tension between the everyday and the fantastical. We make imagined environments that can actually be lived in and art objects that can actually be used.

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Above: Ivy coat rack; Photograph © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P 50

MOS IVY COATRACK SYSTEM, 2010

Self-generated without a client, Michael Meredith tries to recall if the coatrack was simply a solution for their need to hang MOS’s coats at the time. The object still markets itself as “a coatrack for people who hate coatracks and wall art for people who hate coats.” Fabricated with injected molded plastic on steel dies made by MOS, “the process was pretty intense and took months.” They tested with hanging their “stuff” on crude 3-D prints. The office’s library is now full of instructional books they haven’t touched since, though they continue to make objects saying, “once you start it’s hard to stop.” Originally working at a small scale, they started with the idea that they could make products to support their “unrealistic ideas of an architecture practice.” In the end, Meredith says, “our ideas about products turned out to be just as fruitless as our ideas about architecture.” Still, the object making has informed their other projects as they work up in scale—a practice they consider a continuum of anomalies. Materials are chosen if they are cheap and functional so that the objects can be sold cheaply. Though they aren’t designing for anyone in particular, they ask their distributors to make the objects as cheaply as possible. The objects are not the source of income for the firm, nor do they care to make money from them. “Well,” on second thought, “maybe we would like to make a little to support our office,” says Meredith.

MV How do you describe your design style/philosophy?

How has it evolved?

MOS It is incomplete. In terms of our evolution- the more you work, the more the work creates itself. As we get older, the less we look at magazines or blogs.

MV

How does your education inform your practice?

MOS It established a value system that we struggle with and against.

MV

Why not a chair?

MOS

We’ve attempted a chair a few times.

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Below: Google Earth Quilt; Photograph © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

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CHERYL BAXTER GOOGLE EARTH QUILT, 2011

Architect Cheryl Baxter says she developed her design language and personal style and philosophy while she was a student at Cranbook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She describes her design philosophy as involving creating environments and objects that provide people with delight and joy. The cozy quilt is based on a Google Earth image of a farm in Iowa, each is hand pieced and quilted by Baxter herself. She began the project using traditional quilting techniques, piecing printing fabric together. The project evolved into using non-traditional materials and fabrics toward creating varied textures for the landscapes and therefore, experience. Having grown up in a crafting household, she has developed skills across trades, making objects including pillows and clothing.

MV What is the backstory for this object? Why did you make it in the first place?

CB I made it initially for a fundraiser selling iterative objects. There were four quilts, each with a different location in the world. I’ve always been fascinated by the seemingly endless variation in the American landscape—particularly while flying. Looking down from the plane and seeing the landscape transformed by man is extremely intriguing to me.

The quilts are a way to create a tangible object expressing the variation.

MV Is this object considered continuous with your practice or an anomaly?

CB I believe the quilts are a part of my continued practice. I’m interested in distilling broad ideas into tangible pieces as a way to look at them differently. The idea of the Jeffersonian grid translating into the traditional handcraft of quilting makes so much sense to me. Thinking about the variable American landscape—I’m very interested in investigating the reasons for the deliberate manipulation of the land by humans. For example, circular fields are circular because of the irrigation system.

MV

Who are you designing and making for?

CB

Everyone.

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Opposite, above, (Pictured, left to right): Polyester Fiber Containers by Moorhead & Moorhead, UM Tote by Actual, HULU Chinaware by Atelier FCJZ, Wine Sock by MY Studio, Tower of Clips by Barbara Flanagan, Hanging Light by Fiyel Levent, Blossom

by Atelier Manferdini, Ivy Coat rack by MOS. Opposite, below, (Pictured, from left to right): A-Frames

by Chiaozza, Bevel Bowl by Rael San Fratello, Google Map Quilt by Cheryl Baxter, Scraplight by Graypants and Branch Table by Incorporated

Above, (Pictured, left to right): Ivy Coatrack by MOS, Blossom by Atelier Manferdini, Tower of Clips by Barbara Flanagan, Wine Sock by Höweler+Yoon/MY Studio, UM Tote by Actual, Menorah

by Stanley Saitowitz, Bevel Bowl by Rael San Fratello, Float tea lantern by molo, Orbicular Lamp by Nervous System; Photographs © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

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Opening reception in the Keller Gallery, September, 2012; Photograph Š Irina Chernyakova

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Previous: Cellular Screen, detail photograph 2

In a little over two years, room 7-408 has transformed from what was once a plotter room into the Keller gallery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s school of architecture & planning. Through a generous gift by Shawn Keller, principal of C.W. Keller & Associates, the Keller Gallery opened with its first exhibition in the fall of 2011.

With nineteen exhibitions and counting, the Keller has already accomplished much in the way of creating a shared space for the several different communities that pass by and through its door. Part of a larger series of initiatives set forward by Nader Tehrani, who is the current head of the department of architecture, the gallery brings the spirit of debate, ambition, and design into the heart of the school—through and for the faculty and student community. Sarah Hirschman, who helped to launch the curatorial direction of the gallery as its first director, puts it best when she writes that the Keller “uses physicality to get everyone in the room.” As her successor, I cannot think of a better way to sum things up.

The central motivation for such a small gallery—and one less plotting room—is the regenerative challenge to put forth an answer to the question: How to display architecture?

Seemingly simple, this act—one that shifts scales, translates intentions, and relocates our gaze—grows increasingly less straightforward. The simplicity of this question is further amplified by the diminutive dimensions of the gallery. Its size affords only so much and thus forces our exhibitors to be focused, edited, and abbreviated, using limited means to make the strongest conceptual statement. An exhibition at the Keller is conceived as a One-Idea space, a One-Building space, or a miniature exhibit, among a range of other tropes.

As the discipline itself takes on greater, less or simply different responsibilities, the Keller attempts to both reason and argue with the assumptions that have taken hold while we went about our business.

A combination of project images, opening photos, and texts, Objects By Architects Vol. 2 is one of six compact publications that touch upon the immediacy of the exhibition itself, as well as a consideration of the context and conversations that surround it. These collected books do not pretend to recreate the exhibition experience, but rather aspire to expand what we see and what we discuss, as we continue to make architecture in varying formats, and across academic and professional work.

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