Saved by the Thesis

Page 1

WA/SA [waldrip architects/ s.a.] [architecture- los angeles]

Alberti, Sandro Saved by the Thesis; 11 January, 2004 [text37]

Working 9-5, at...

‘WA/SA’, ‘Aloha8’, and ‘Working 9 to 5, at...’

Definitely easier, to venture into the belly of the beast than to find fortunate design linkages (‘in bocca al lupo’). ‘Yesterday’, how to connect automotive and architectural design. ‘Today’, how to transcribe design from academia to world. This weekend, SCI-Arc presented student theses, so I traveled there with Erin Sharp (www.esharp.org), The structure of a well-known era. and began at the northern end of the school terminal, assisted by cups of Bitches Brew from the local ‘neighborhood’ café. ‘Keep Off the Grass!’: At the school gallery, Griffin Enright Architects (www.grifinenrightarchitects.com) present a wood + tensile-cable + sod construction, which I continue to define as uncomfortable (insofar as this is a continuation of a popular city-wide presentation fluid ‘environments’ at 1:1 scale). Don’t ‘get’ me wrong. It is worth visiting, this. It works structurally (“…exploring the tectonic nature of this plane by emphasizing its tissue-like thinness, flexibility, and texture...”). And it works artistically-politically (“…the suspension of over 1000 square feet of sod… commenting on its negative impacts on our larger environment…”). Stepping back, I mean, I had not seen this particular exhibit before, but, as I squeezed through that standardized southern doorway, in the midst of the powerful flow and hovering tension and materiality, something was missing, and it was that same thing ‘missed’ in another life-size representation, at MoCA’s lobby (a small fragment of Frank Gehry’s symphony), and even here again (SCI-Arc gallery), before, at/in a spatial configuration of copper tubing (Xefirotarch). In writing I am discerning this ‘thing’, so please allow me a few lines. Maybe it’s not so much an issue of enormity as much as spatial balance, point of view, and/or completeness. First, I remember and mention that there is another, similar, archi-sculpture that does seems to work (the exemplary comparison). Next door to the small gallery, at an entry space to the school, there hangs the similar, but oddly ‘improved’, presentation. As I recall, this is a remnant, part of a project to actively enhance that northern end of the building, at a time when there was some thought about an incorporated café. This ended up being a call for entries that would effectively affect old-vs-new, SCI-Arc-vs-café, fluid-vs-orthogonal (many interesting flows to be enjoyed). Now, months later, one [grouping] of these remains, hanging at the top of the

are fictions of fen-om: [www.fen-om.com]

Underlying production.

Underlying structure.

The ‘grass’.


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