Hallway Industry

Alberti, Sandro; 2 May, 2002 [text15]

More hallway work from the bowels of A+UD, UCLA!

**Surface decoration: students’ digital prototypes.**

In a specialized course, Greg Lynn and David Erdman lead us into an evaluation of design and manufacturing (technological) techniques.

Part of a sequence-series that has made previous stops at ‘massing + envelope description’, ‘surface subdivision/ panelization’, ‘object-field relationships’, and ‘frameskin relationships’ [see www.sorensenarchitects.com/wasa/theory/theory3-9.pdf for an includedbrief sub-review of this last one], this session now emphasizes ‘fenestrationdecoration-surface’. Sub-topics include sameness, typologies of generative differentiation, organicity-hierarchy-synthesis, fusion, proportional regulation via non-whole numbers, intricacy, curves (as polylines of variable subdivision), and lines (as potential inflected curves). Here we see some of the students’ computer-designed-and-produced final proposals for panels, quite appropriately placed to the school’s permanent ‘Sullivan’ plaque, at the main entrance to the building.

On the other end of the spectrum ‘shines’ work developed by first-time firstyear students. In an ‘introduction to thematics’, work explores modular units and a repetition/rhythm that generates surface from structure (tectonics to structure to site to urban organization). Three nice examples were encountered here:

1. The tight packing of elements, incorporating rotation and displacement to the repetition, yields DNA-like strands that swirl ‘independently’.

2. More complex relationships yield a glimpse at what, while maintaining structural integrity, could yield very supple aesthetics.

3. This proposal seems to be offered extra-structurally (falling into the range of shading trellis; but certainly might and could be thought as a modular sub-structural grid that would certainly affect the configuration and quality of the sheltered space).

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Hallway Industry