11 19 portfolio by shane rr

Selected Work For the Princeton University School of Architecutre

Curriculum Vitae 01

Dear Architecture, “Becoming Upside-Down” Published Work

I Was An Important House That Day Personal Work

Everyverything Student Work (Advisors: Florencia Pita and Marcelyn Gow)

Suspended Animation Student Work (Advisor: Marcelyn Gow)

Infraordinary Student Work (Advisor: Andrew Atwood)

Museum of the Captive Lotus Student Work (Advisor: Darin Johnstone)

Satellite City Personal Work

Rooftop Deck at MoMa PS1 Professional Work (Employer: Erin Besler)

Facebook Mobile/Digital Westworld Professional Work (Employer: SCPS Unlimited)

YF Restaurant Professional Work (Employer: Fleetwood Fernandez Architects)

Balloon Frame Professional Work (Employer: Florencia Pita and Jackilin Bloom)

Museum of the History of the Motel Exhibition

Mas Context, “Figural Monuments” Published Work

Clog Journal, “History of the World Trade Center, Part II” Published Work

Pidgin Journal, “Bricks and Stickers” Published Work

Log Journal, “A Movable Taste” Published Work

Curriculum Vitae Shane Reiner-Roth +1 818 421 0872 shanereinerroth@gmail.com everyverything.com talltalltall.com

Design Experience TALL Work / co-founder, director, designer, writer / 2014 - present / los angeles, ca and dubai, uae / tallwork.com Producing written content, research and imagery towards publications, grants, and installations.

Fleetwood Fernandez / designer, writer / 2015 / santa monica, ca / fleetwoodfernandez.com

Designed and rendered exterior and interior of Yellow Fever Restaurant in Venice, California, consulted with clients regarding design process and plan changes, wrote content for website, and produced schematic design for upcoming mixed-use building in Venice.

One Night Stand LA / exhibitor / 2015 / westlake, ca

Produced an installation as part of a group exhibition in motel room at the Holiday Lodge.

Education

Welcome Projects / designer, animator / 2014 / echo park, ca / welcomeprojects.com

SCI-Arc (Southern California

Erin Besler / designer, collagist / 2014 - 2015 / downtown los angeles, ca / erinbesler.com

Institute of Architecture)

Los Angeles, CA Bachelor of Architecture, 9/09 - 05/14 Accumulative GPA: 3.54 Thesis Merit Award

Designed and animated ‘Two-Face’ stop-motion for new hand bag series on Welcome Projects website. Produced collages for MoMA PS1 Competition, ‘Roof Deck,’ consulted design strategy, and researched references.

SCPS Unlimited / designer, animator, renderer / 2014 / torrance, ca / scpsunlimited.com

Produced animation for upcoming HBO title sequence, designed and installed set design for Honda commercial, animated lighting sequence for Yves Saint Laurent slot machine installed in Paris, France, and designed, rendered, and animated photo mobile for Facebook.

Pita + Bloom / designer, book producer / 2013 - 2014 / boyle heights, ca / pita-bloom.com

Designed elements for MoMA PS1 Competition Entry, ‘Balloon Frames,’ and produced accompanying book.

Andrew Atwood (First Office) / assistant curator / 2013 / downtown los angeles, ca / firstoff.net Assisted in installation of carpets, fans, pedestals, and paint for the exhibition ....And Pedestals.

Research Experience Joe Day / assistant curator / 2015 - present / los angeles, ca and jakarta, indonesia / deegandaydesign.com Providing research and written content for upcoming installation.

MyKukun / writer / 2015 - present / online / mykukun.com

Writing articles concerning innovative housing and the strengthening of the relationship between architects and clients.

LAXART / writer / 2015 / west hollywood, ca / laxart.com

Wrote several biographies and press releases for upcoming artist installations and grants.

SCI-Arc Library / librarian / 2010 - 2014 / downtown los angeles, ca / sciarc.edu

Selected, developed, catalogued and classified library resources., helped visitors find and select books, updated library and website database.

SCI-Arc Media Archive / editor / 2013 - 2014 / downtown los angeles, ca / sciarc.edu

Researched and compiled information to complete media archive of 700+ lecture videos, as well as wrote descriptions for several of them.

SCI-Arc Lecture Series Committee / editor / 2012 - 2013 / downtown los angeles, ca / sciarc.edu Chose lecturers for the lecture series and prepared their flight and payment itinerary.

Publications Log Journal / spring.summer 2015, #34 / new york, ny / with kyle branchesi / anycorp.org “A Movable Taste”

Pidgin Journal / forthcoming, #20 / princeton, nj / pidginmagazine.com “Bricks and Stickers”

Soiled Journal / forthcoming / chicago, il / with kyle branchesi / soiledzine.org “Joining the Invisible Choir”

Offramp Journal / forthcoming / los angeles, ca / sciarc-offramp.info “Museum of the History of the Motel”

Lobby Journal / fall 2014, #2 / london, uk / with kyle branchesi / bartlettlobby.com “Future’s Tense”

Clog Journal / fall 2014 / new york, ny / with kyle branchesi and jing yan / clog-online.com “History of the World Trade Center, Part II”

Dear Architecture / winter 2015 / new york, ny / with kyle branchesi / blankspaceproject.com “Becoming Upside Down”

Mas Context / winter 2015 / chicago, il / with kyle branchesi / mascontext.com “Figural Monuments: Six Ways to Commemorate Celebrity Mishaps”

Lunch Journal / summer 2015 / charlottesville, va / uvalunch.com

“Strangely Familiar: A Study of Everything Between Every Single Thing”

One Night Stand LA / summer 2015 / los angeles, ca / uvalunch.com “Museum of the History of the Motel”

MVT Journal / forthcoming / cambridge, uk “Real Figments”

IntJournal / winter 2014 / intjournal.com

“Kill Bill and the Erosion of the Movie Set”

Edge Condition / summer 2014 / with kyle branchesi / edgecondition.net “Architecture > Language > Architecture”

Cityvision / summer 2014 / with kyle branchesi / cityvisionweb.com “Satellite City”

Oxford School of Architecture Journal / summer 2014 / with kyle branchesi / osamag.bigcartel.com “The Architect Laughs Last”

Lobby Online / spring 2015 / bartlettlobby.com “Instrumental Plausibility”

Lobby Online / spring 2015 / bartlettlobby.com “Gateway Tower Gated”

Urban Operations / spring 2012 / with John Southern and Celine Juan / urbanops.org “Wilshire Star Maps II”

01 Dear Architecture With Kyle Branchesi Forthcoming New York, NY

Dear Architecture, I write this to inform you that you’re stuck. Or, rather, that you appear to be stuck. You must feel painted into your own corner, and perhaps we’re to blame. Because you’re so assuredly sunk in the ground, with your plumbing twisted in a knot; because heaven forbid the moment you’re confusing you might cause some missed flights; because every component of your being is ossified, codified, and standardized by things you’ve never even heard of. You’re nothing more now than a mailbox for the mailman, a quick buck for the toupéed, and storage for the rest. What used to be your best qualities have been systematically targeted to fade away, and the only thing that remains is a private way of thinking about you: wistfully, in the past, and no longer now. The purpose of this letter is to ask you a question: have you considered the benefits of becoming upside-down? It could turn your whole life around. Before I sell you on the concept, you should know what becoming upside-down involves: your chimneys squirm in rotation, the depths of your awnings approach zero to gain mass on the other side, your windows push and squeak past each other for a spot in the limelight, and your roofs multiply infinitesimally to clear a path for clean slates. Your initial resistance towards loosening up would be understandable. After all, the act is not about satisfying any stylistic concern, and it’s certainly not about the proper relationship between anything and anything else. From your end, this must sound unpleasant, and like a rather intense exercise. But you have to remember that this is not the first time your motives have been undermined. In your experience, each new obstacle has birthed a uniquely indomitable solution. Right now you might feel safe with all the codes and regulations, but I think you’ll come to prefer the sway of unchartered waters in due time. Becoming upside-down is a great opportunity to have your eaves and treads newly considered; to forcibly push your best qualities back to the center of conversation. While your elements churn and do whatever else they may, they’ll grind to a halt at each moment to be read for the readers. In the odyssey from double doors to single chimney, for instance - a monumental task by anyone’s measure - you’ll soon regain the audience you had lost for longer than we can both recall. I grew up believing that Architecture is everything, but now I’d like to see you prove it. With your commitment, you could be the one at long last to recede into the bending landscape and over the horizon line. Why should it not be your turn to escape geometry by a fugitive mobility? I implore you to consider the many benefits of becoming upside-down; and given the contemplative solitude you’re afforded while tied to the ground, I’ll permit you some time to sleep on it. Till then, Your confidant

02 I Was An Important House that Day Ongoing Project Published in part by Book Machine

I am a house that grows up not knowing it is a house at all; a house so removed from the domestic life I wouldn’t know where to start. I am a house that mimics all the other things I see, that is spiny, springy, or bendy, or whatever else fits the mood. I am a house that survives an axe wound and spends its days happily split in two. I am a house that peels open to reveal a marble treat, loaded with potassium. I am a house that spills out the windows when full of water and offers a respite for the sea creatures. I am a house straight out of a monster movie, after hitting the ground at alarming speeds. I am a house that is stepped on like a bad bug and still makes room for a decent kitchen island. I am a house that finds pleasure in the actions of its brethren objects, that jumps and jives and does the splits. I am a house of a thousand dances. I am a house that twirls upwards like a pig’s tail, after combing out the loose bricks. I am a house that slips into the sidewalk without any starch, which fractures like an egg, which is craggy and articulated as an ageless artifact, which is left alone for who-knows-how-long to break in two and develop smaller versions of itself inwardly onwardly. I am a house that bends and tosses and turns and everything all else. I am a house that flattens and takes off like a wayward carpet. I am a house that grows chimneys to divide its roofs. I am a house that can guarantee your boat won’t budge on the water. I am a house that conceals a nation on the other side. I am a house of walking pipes and plumbing under the floorboards. I am a house of growing pains. I am a house that proves the architect’s hand always exceeds the surface. I am a house that lies between the floors of silent seas and an airborne mirage. I am a house that ascends like a set of its own stairs, “no where up but something down.” I am a house of columns not suitable to load anything other than wet laundry. I am a house of brick confusion and stucco ambiguity. I am a house of chimney cannons and spooky skeleton frames. I am a house of sliding facades and lighthouse bedrooms. I am a house in everything all together.

A House Divided

Installation View

03 Everyverything Spring 2014 Advisors: Florencia Pita, Marcelyn Gow, Jeffrey Kipnis, Dora Epstein-Jones, Thom Mayne Thesis Merit Award

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thus the unfacts, did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude, the evidencegivers by legpoll too untrustworthily irreperible where his adjugers are semmingly freak threes but his judicandees plainly minus twos.â&#x20AC;? -James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

The inbetweeners are the lower case i. They are not hybrids, nor are they monsters (though some are monstrous). They are only what is in-beee-tween one and two. Topologists use them to discover the Real; animators use them to make vital the Imaginary. The inbetweeners are independent in composition and contingent in behavior. They are the alchemical image; the unglued atomic structure. They mock plane geometry. The inbetweeners are the minutely non-repetitive. They are fleeting, innumerable, incalculable, plural, disposable, transient, infinitesimal and often imperceptible. They are the portmanteau and the toruscup. The inbetweeners are the unfacts.

Title, Animation Still

The Homer Problem

Duck to Shed

Axon, Animation Still

plan of

Section, Animation Still

Axon, Animation Still

Chouse to Ball and Back

Installation View

04 Suspended Animation Spring 2014 Advisor: Marcelyn Gow

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am very interested in the other nature, the artificial world of chemistry, electronics, and information that surrounds us. An extensive and intrusive nature , in which man in immersed like a fish in the sea.â&#x20AC;? -Andrea Branzi

The water fountains surrounding the DWP, once a symbol of fertility in an otherwise barren desert, are now read as a barometer for the water crisis of recent years. The sights and sounds of gurgling water on this artificial plinth indicate prosperity; their absence means trouble. Suspended Animation plays a strong role in extending these indications to the public. The plinthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s water circulates above and below the plinth on a daily basis, through several internal capillaries and straight into the masses of the Research Center below. The Research Center itself is read as one large room with several porous and translucent landmarks. The research partners will determine for themselves where to set up offices, research labs, and sanctuaries. The expanding and contracting capillaries within these landmarks, buzzing and whirring like an intrusive HVAC system, indicate a crisis to be solved. The tension between these two environments - the concern of the public and the responsibility of the private - is made explicit in suspended animation.

Worm’s Eye View

Long Section

First Floor Plan

Basement Plan

Axon

Model Perspective

Model Aerial

05 Infraordinary Fall 2013 Advisor: Andrew Atwood

“The daily newspapers talk of everything except the daily. The papers annoy me , they teach me nothing. What they recount doesn’t concern me, doesn’t ask me questions and doesn’t answer the questions I ask or would like to ask. What’s really going on, what we’re experiencing, the rest, all the rest, where is it? How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs everyday: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual? To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither question nor answers, as if it weren’t the bearer of any information. This is not longer even conditioning, it’s anaesthesia. We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space? How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are. What’s needed perhaps is finally to found our own anthropology, one that will speak about us, will look in ourselves for what for so long we’ve been pillaging from others. Not the exotic anymore, but the endotic.” -Georges Perec

OM MY SIGHT, THIS IS NITUDE AND SOME IMORGANS, BUT IT IS LD NOT BE HIDDEN BY OULD NOT BE EITHER TO ONE SIDE OF IT, LATION OF ANY KIND D NO LONGER BELONG HERE IS THE TABLE. THE ANIFEST IN THE FORM N TO ITS INDIFFERENT S A PURELY EXTERNAL R. THE CONSTITUTION CITY OF RECIPROCAL ED ONLY FROM THE F SCIENCE; IT CANNOT BE REPRESENTED. THE THE BLACKBOARD SO REASONING IS NECESE CIRCLE TANGENT TO ARILY TO THE EXTENT RD. AND MY EFFORT IS CHARACTERISTICS OF K BY NOT INCLUDING CALCULATIONS ANY

“I EXIST MY BODY: THIS IS ITS FIRST DIMENSION OF BEING. MY BODY IS UTILIZED AND KNOWN BY THE OTHER: THIS IS ITS SECOND DIMENSION. BUT IN SO FAR AS I AM FOR OTHERS, THE OTHER IS REVEALED TO ME AS THE SUBJECT FOR WHOM I AM AN OBJECT. EVEN THERE THE QUESTION, AS WE HAVE SEEN, IS OF MY FUNDAMENTAL RELATION WITH THE OTHER. I EXIST THEREFORE FOR MYSELF AS KNOWN BY THE OTHER-IN PARTICULAR IN MY VERY FACTICITY. I EXIST FOR MYSELF AS A BODY KNOWN BY THE OTHER. THIS IS THE THIRD ONTOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF MY BODY. THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO STUDY NEXT; WITH IT WE SHALL HAVE EXHAUSTED THE QUESTION OF THE BODY'S MODES OF BEING. WITH THE APPEARANCE OF THE OTHER'S LOOK I EXPERIENCE THE REVELATION OF MY BEING-AS-OBJECT; THAT IS, OF MY TRANSCENDENCE AS TRANSCENDED. A ME-AS¬ OBJECT IS REVEALED TO ME AS AN UNKNOWABLE BEING, AS THE FLIGHT INTO AN OTHER WHICH I AM WITH FULL RESPONSIBILITY. BUT WHILE I CAN NOT KNOW NOR EVEN CONCEIVE OF THIS "ME" IN .ITS REALITY, AT LEAST I AM NOT WITHOUT APPRE¬ HENDING CERTAIN OF ITS FORMAL STRUCTURES. IN PARTICULAR· I FEEL MYSELF TOUCHED BY THE OTHER IN MY FACTUAL EXISTENCE; IT IS MY BEING-THERE-FOR¬ OTHERS FOR WHICH I AM RESPONSIBLE. THIS BEING-THERE IS PRECISELY THE BODY. THUS THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE OTHER DOES NOT ONLY TOUCH ME IN MY TRANSCENDENCE: IN AND THROUGH THE TRANSCENDENCE WHICH THE OTHER SURPASSES, THE FACTICITY WHICH MY TRANSCENDENCE NIHILATES AND TRANSCENDS EXISTS FOR THE OTHER; AND TO THE EXTENT THAT I AM CONSCIOUS OF EXISTING FOR THE OTHER I APPREHEND MY OWN FACTICITY, NOT ONLY IN ITS NON-THETIC NIHILATION, NOT ONLY IN THE EXISTENT, BUT IN ITS FLIGHT TOWARDS A

SECTIONA

MORE THAN THE THICKNESS OF THE LINES OR THE IMPERFECTION OF THE DRAWING. THUS BY THE MERE FACT THAT THERE IS A WORLD, THIS WORLD CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT A UNIVOCAL ORIENTATION IN RELATION TO ME. IDEALISM HAS INSISTED ON THE FACT THAT RELATION MAKES THE WORLD. BUT SINCE IDEALISM TOOK ITS POSITION ON THE GROUND OF NEWTONIAN SCIENCE, IT CONCEIVED THIS RELATION AS A RELATION OF RECIPROCITY. THUS IT ATTAINED ONLY ABSTRACT CONCEPTS OF PURE EXTERIOTITY, OF ACTION AND REACTION, ETC., AND DUE TO THIS VERY FACT IT MISSED THE WORLD AND SUCCEEDED ONLY IN MAKING EXPLICIT THE LIMITING CONCEPT OF ABSOLUTE OBJECTIVITY.”

A B E ING-IN-THE-MIDST-OF THE WORLD. THE SHOCK OF THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE OTHER IS FOR ME A REVELATION IN EMPTINESS OF THE EXISTENCE OF MY BODY OUTSIDE AS AN IN-ITSELF FOR THE OTHER. THUS MY BODY IS NOT GIVEN MERELY AS THAT WHICH IS PURELY AND SIMPLY LIVED; RATHER THIS "LIVED EXPERIENCE"BECOMES-IN AND THROUGH THE CONTINGENT, ABSOLUTE FACT OF THE OTHER'S EXISTENCE-EXTENDED OUTSIDE IN A DIMENSION OF FLIGHT WHICH ESCAPES ME. MY BODY'S DEPTH OF BEING IS FOR ME THIS PERPETUAL "OUTSIDE" OF MY MOST INTIMATE "INSIDE." TO THE EXTENT THAT THE OTHER'S OMNIPRESENCE IS THE FUNDAMENTAL FACT, THE OBJECTIVITY OF MY BEING-THERE IS A CONSTANT DIMENSION OF MY FACTICITY; I EXIST MY CONTINGENCY IN SO FAR AS I SURPASS IT TOWARD MY POSSIBLES AND IN SO FAR AS IT SURREPTITIOUSLY FLEES ME TOWARD AN IRREMEDIABLE. MY BODY IS THERE NOT ONLY AS THE POINT OF VIEW WHICH I AM BUT AGAIN AS A POINT OF VIEW ON WHICH ARE ACTUALLY BROUGHT TO BEAR POINTS OF VIEW WHICH I COULD NEVER TAKE; MY BODY ESCAPES ME ON ALL SIDES. THIS MEANS FIRST THAT THIS ENSEMBLE OF SENSES, WHICH THEMSELVES CAN NOT BE APPREHENDED, IS GIVEN AS APPRE¬ HEPDED ELSEWHERE AND BY OTHERS. THIS APPREHENSION WHICH IS THUS EMPTILY MANIFESTED DOES NOT HAVE THE CHARACTER OF AN ONTOLOGICAL NECESSITY; ITS EXISTENCE CAN NOT BE DERIVED EVEN FROM MY FACTICITY, BUT IT IS AN EVIDENT AND ABSOLUTE FACT. IT HAS THE CHARACTER OF A FACTUAL NECESSITY. SINCE MY FAC¬TICITY IS PURE CONTINGENCY AND IS REVEALED TO ME NON-THETICALLY AS A FACTUAL NECESSITY, THE BEING-FOR-OTHERS OF THIS FACTICITY COMES TO INCREASE THE CON¬ TINGENCY OF THIS FACTICITY, WHICH IS LOST AND FLEES FROM ME IN AN INFINITY OF CONTINGENCY WHICH ESCAPES ME. THUS AT THE VERY MOMENT WHEN I LIVE MY SENSES AS THIS INNER POINT OF VIEW ON WHICH I CAN TAKE NO POINT OF VIEW, THEIR BEING-FOR-OTHERS HAUNTS ME: THEY ARE. FOR THE OTHER, MY SENSES ARE AS THIS TABLE OR AS THIS TREE IS FOR ME. THEY ARE IN THE MIDST OF A WORLD; THEY ARE IN AND THROUGH THE ABSOLUTE FLOW OF MY WORLD TOWARD THE OTHER. THUS THE RELATIVITY OF MY SENSES, WHICH I CAN NOT THINK ABSTRACTLY WITHOUT DESTROYING MY WORLD, IS AT THE SAME TIME PERPETUALLY MADE PRESENT TOMETHROUGH THE OTHER'S EXISTENCE; BUT IT IS A PURE AND INAPPREHENSIBLE APPRESENTATION. IN THE SAME WAY MY BODY IS FOR ME THE INSTRUMENT WHICH I AM AND WHICH CAN NOT BE UTILIZED BY ANY INSTRUMENT. BUT TO THE EXTENT THAT THE OTHER IN THE ORIGINAL ENCOUNTER TRANSCENDS MY BEING-THERE TOWARD HIS POSSIBILITIES, .THIS INSTRUMENT WHICH I AM IS MADE-PRESENT TO ME AS AN IN¬ STRUMENT SUBMERGED IN AN INFINITE INSTRUMENTAL SERIES, ALTHOUGH I CAN IN NO WAY VIEW THIS SERIES BY "SURVEYING" IT. MY BODY AS ALIENATED ESCAPES ME TOWARD A BEING-A-TOOL-AMONG-TOOLS, TOWARDS A BEING-A-SENSE-ORGAN-APPREHENDED-BY-SENSE-ORGANS, AND THIS IS

Detail of Section Four

Clashing Tetrrahedron Building, Section and Plan

Clashing Cube Building, Section and Plan

THEREFORE WE HAVE DELIBERATELY CHOSEN THE PHYSICAL POINT OF VIEW- I.E., THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE OUTSIDE, OF EXTERIORITY-IN ORDER TO STUDY THE PROBLEM OF VISION; WE HAVE CONSIDERED A DEAD EYE IN THE MIDST OF THE VISIBLE WORLD IN ORDER TO ACCOUNT FOR THE VISIBILITY OF THIS WORLD. CONSEQUENTLY, HOW CAN WE BE SURPRISED LATER WHEN CONSCIOUSNESS, WHICH IS ABSOLUTE INTERIORITY, REFUSES TO ALLOW ITSELF TO BE BOUND TO THIS OBJECT? THE RELATIONS WHICH I ESTABLISH BETWEEN THE OTHER'S BODY AND THE EXTERNAL OBJECT ARE REALLY EXISTING RELATIONS, BUT THEY HAVE FOR THEIR BEING THE BEING OF THE FOR-OTHERS; THEY SUPPOSE A CENTER OF INTRA-MUNDANE FLOW IN WHICH KNOWLEDGE IS A MAGIC PROPERTY OF SPACE, "ACTION AT A DISTANCE." FROM THE START THEY ARE PLACED IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE OTHER¬ AS-OBJECT. IF THEN WE WISH TO REFLECT ON THE NATURE OF THE BODY, IT IS NECESSARY TO ESTABLISH AN ORDER OF OUR REFLECTIONS WHICH CONFORMS TO THE ORDER OF BEING: WE CAN NOT CONTINUE TO CONFUSE THE ONTOLOGICAL LEVELS, AND WE MUST IN SUCCESSION EXAMINE THE BODY FIRST AS BEING-FOR-ITSELF AND THEN AS

BEING-FOR-OTHERS. AND IN ORDER TO AVOID SUCH ABSURDITIES AS "INVERTED VISION," WE MUST KEEP CONSTANTLY IN MIND THE IDEA THAT SINCE THESE TWO ASPECTS OF THE BODY ARE ON DIFFERENT AND INCOMMUNICABLE LEVELS OF BEING, THEY CAN NOT BE REDUCED TO ONE ANOTHER. BEING-FOR-ITSELF MUST BE WHOLLY BODY AND IT MUST BE WHOLLY CONSCIOUSNESS; IT CAN NOT BE UNITED WITH A BODY. SIMILARLY BEING-FOR-OTHERS IS WHOLLY BODY; THERE ARE NO "PSYCHIC PHENOMENA" THERE TO BE UNITED WITH THE BODY. THERE IS NOTHING BEHIND THE BODY. BUT THE BODY IS WHOLLY "PSYCHIC." WE MUST NOW PROCEED TO STUDY THESE TWO MODES OF BEING WHICH WE FIND FOR THE BODY. IT APPEARS AT FIRST GLANCE THAT THE PRECEDING OBSERVATIONS ARE OPPOSED TO THE GIVENS OF THE CARTESIAN COGITO. "THE SOUL IS EASIER TO KNOW THAN THE BODY," SAID DESCARTES. THEREBY HE INTENDED TO MAKE A RADICAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE FACTS OF THOUGHT, WHICH ARE ACCESSIBLE TO REFLECTION, AND THE FACTS OF THE BODY, THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHICH MUST BE GUARANTEED BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE. IT APPEARS AT

FIRST THAT REFLECTION REVEALS TO US ONLY PURE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. OF COURSE ON THIS LEVEL WE ENCOUNTER PHENOMENA WHICH APPEAR TO INCLUDE WITHIN THEMSELVES SOME CONNECTION WITH THE BODY; "PHYSICAL" PAIN, THE UNCOMFORTABLE, PLEASURE, ETC. BUT THESE PHENOMENA ARE NO LESS PURE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. THERE IS A TENDENCY THEREFORE TO MAKE SIGNS OUT OF THEM, AFFECTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS OCCASIONED BY THE BODY, WITHOUT REALIZING THAT ONE HAS THEREBY IRREMEDIABLY DRIVEN THE BODY OUT OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THAT NO BOND WILL EVER BE ABLE TO REUNITE THIS BODY, WHICH IS ALREADY A BODY-FOR-OTHERS, WITH THE CONSCIOUSNESS WHICH, IT IS CLAIMED, MAKES THE BODY MANIFEST. FURTHERMORE WE OUGHT NOT TO TAKE THIS AS OUR POINT OF DEPARTURE BUT RATHER OUR PRIMARY RELATION TO THE IN-ITSELF: OUR BEING-IN-THE-WORLD. WE KNOW THAT THERE IS NOT A FOR-ITSELF ON THE ONE HAND AND A WORLD ON THE OTHER AS TWO CLOSED ENTITIES FOR WHICH WE MUST SUBSEQUENTLY SEEK SOME EXPLANATION AS TO HOW THEY COMMUNICATE. THE FOR-ITSELF, BY DENYING THAT IT IS BEING, M A K E S

FLOORPLANTWO

Second Floor

“THE PROBLEM OF THE BODY AND ITS RELATIONS WITH CONSCIOUSNESS IS OFTEN OBSCURED BY THE FACT THAT WHILE THE BODY IS FROM THE START POSITED AS A CERTAIN THING HAVING ITS OWN LAWS AND CAPABLE OF BEING DEFINED FROM OUT¬ SIDE, CONSCIOUSNESS IS THEN REACHED BY THE TYPE OF INNER INTUITION WHICH IS PECULIAR TO IT. ACTUALLY IF AFTER GRASPING "MY" CONSCIOUSNESS IN ITS ABSOLUTE INTERIORITY AND BY A SERIES OF REFLECTIYE ACTS, I THEN SEEK TO UNITE IT WITH A CERTAIN LIVING OBJECT COMPOSED OF A NERVOUS SYSTEM, A BRAIN, GLANDS, DIGESTIVE, RESPIRATORY, AND CIRCULATORY ORGANS WHOSE VERY MATTER IS CAPABLE OF BEING ANALYZED CHEMICALLY INTO ATOMS OF HYDROGEN, CARBON, NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS, ETC., THEN I AM GOING TO ENCOUNTER INSURMOUNTABLE DIFFICUlTIES. BUT THESE DIFFICULTIES ALL STEM FROM THE FACT: THAT I TRY TO.UNITE·MY CONSCIOUSNESS NOT WITH MY BODY BUT WITH THE BODY OF OTHERS. IN FACT THE BODY WHICH I HAVE JUST DESCRIBED IS NOT MY BODY SUCH AS IT FOR ME. I HAVE.NEVER SEEN AND NEVER SHALL SEE MY BRAIN NOR MY ENDOCRINE GLANDS BUT BECAUSE I WHO AM A MAN HAVE SEEN THE

CADAVERS OF MEN DISSECTED, BECAUSE I HAVE READ ARTICLES ON PHYSIOLOGY, I CONCLUDE THAT MY BODY IS CON¬STITUTED EXACTLY LIKE ALL THOSE WHICH HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO ME ON THE.DISSEC¬TION TABLE OR OF WHICH I HAVE SEEN COLORED DRAWINGS IN BOOKS. OF COURSE THE PHYSICIANS WHO HAVE TAKEN CARE OF ME, THE SURGEONS WHO HAVEOPERATED ON ME, HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HAVE DIRECT EXPERIENCE WITH THE BODY WHICH I MYSELF DO NOT KNOW. I DO NOT DISAGREE WITH THEM; I DO NOT CLAIM THAT I LACK A BRAIN, A HEART, OR A STOMACH. BUT IT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO CHOOSE THE ORDER OF OUR BITS OFKNOWLEDGE. SO FAR AS THE PHYSICIANS HAVE HAD ANY EXPERIENCE WITH MY BODY, IT WAS WITH MY BODY IN THE MIDST OF TILE WORLD AND AS IT IS FOR OTHERS. MY BODY AS IT IS FOR ME DOES NOT APPEAR TO INE IN THE MIDST OF THE WORLD. OF COURSE DURING A RADIOSCOPY I WAS ABLE TO SEE THE PICTURE OF MY VERTEBRAE ON A SCREEN, BUT I WAS OUTSIDE IN THE MIDST OF THE WORLD. I WAS APPREHENDING A WHOLLY CONSTITUTED OBJECT AS A THIS AMONG OTHER THISES, AND IT WAS ONLY BY A REASONING PROCESS THAT I REFERRED IT BACK TO BEING MINE; IT WAS MUCH MORE MY

PROPERTY THAN MY BEING. IT IS TRUE THAT I SEE AND TOUCH MY LEGS AND MY HANDS. MOREOVER NOTHING PREVENTS ME FROM IMAGINING AN ARRANGEMENT OF THE SENSE ORGANS SUCH THAT A LIVING BEING COULD SEE ONE OF HIS EYES WHILE THE EYE WHICH WAS SEEN WAS DIRECTING ITS GLANCE UPON THE WORLD. BUT IT IS TO BE NOTED THAT IN THIS CASE AGAIN I AM THE OTHER IN RELATION TO MY EYE. I APPREHEND IT AS A SENSE ORGAN CONSTITUTED IN THE WORLD IN A PARTICULAR WAY, BUT I CANNOT "SEE THE SEEING," THAT IS, I CANNOT APPREHEND IT IN THE PROCESS OF REVEALING AN ASPECT OF THE WORLD TO ME. EITHER IT IS A THING AMONG OTHER THINGS, OR ELSE IT IS THAT BY WHICH THINGS ARE REVEALED TO ME. BUT IT CANNOT BE BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. SIMILARLY I SEE MY HAND TOUCHING OBJECTS, BUT DO NOT KNOW IT IN ITS ACT OF TOUCHING THEM. THIS IS THE FUNDAMENTAL REASON WHY THAT FAMOUS "SEN¬SATION OF EFFORT" OF MAINE DE BIRAN DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. FOR MY HAND RE¬ VEALS TO ME THE RESISTANCE OF OBJECTS, THEIR HARDNESS OR SOFTNESS, BUT NOT ITSELF. THUS I SEE MY HAND ONLY IN THE WAY THAT I SEE THIS INKWELL. I UNFOLD A DISTANCE BETWEEN IT AND

FLOORPLANFIVE

Fifth Floor

ACCOMPANIED BY AN ALIENATING DESTRUCTION AND A CONCRETE COLLAPSE OF MY WORLD WHICH FLOWS TOWARD THE OTHER AND WHICH THE OTHER WILL REAPPREHEND IN HIS WORLD. WHEN, FOR EXAMPLE, A DOCTOR LISTENS TO MY BREATHING, I PERCEIVE HIS EAR. TO THE EXTENT THAT THE OBJECTS OF THE WORLD INDICATE ME AS AN ABSOLUTE CENTER OF REFERENCE, THIS PERCEIVED EAR INDICATES CERTAIN STRUCTURES AS FORMS WHICH I EXIST ON MY BODY-AS-A-GROUND. THESE STRUCTURES-IN THE SAME UPSURGE WITH MY BEING BELONG WITH THE PURELY LIVED; THEY ARE THAT WHICH I EXIST AND WHICH I NIHIIATE. THUS WE HAVE HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE THE ORIGINAL CONNECTION BETWEEN DESIGNATION AND THE LIVED. THE THINGS PERCEIVED DESIGNATE THAT WHICH I SUBJECTIVELY EXIST. BUT I APPREHEND-ON THE COLLAPSE OF THE SENSE OBJECT "EAR"-THE DOCTOR AS LISTENING TO THE SOUNDS IN MY BODY, FEELING MY BODY WITH HIS BODY, AND IMMEDIATELY THE LIVED-DESIGNATED BECOMES DESIGNATED AS A THING OUTSIDE MY SUBJECTIVITY, IN THE MIDST OF A NORLD WHICH IS NOT MINE. MY BODY IS DESIGNATED AS ALIENATED. THE EXPERIENCE OF MY ALIENATION IS MADE IN AND THROUGH AFFECTIVE STRUC¬ TURES SUCH AS, FOR EXAMPLE, SHYNESS. TO "FEEL ONESELF BLUSHING," TO "FEEL ONESELF SWEATING," ETC., ARE INACCURATE EXPRESSIONS WHICH THE SHY PERSON USES TO DESCRIBE HIS STATE; WHAT HE REALLY MEANS IS THAT HE IS VIVIDLY AND CONSTANTLY CONSCIOUS OF HIS BODY NOT AS IT IS FOR HIM BUT AS IT IS FOR THE OTHER. THIS CONSTANT UNEASINESS, WHICH IS THE APPREHENSION

SECTIONC

Section One

SECTIONB

Secition Two

06 Museum of the Captive Lotus Spring 2013 Advisor: Darin Johnstone

Before there was any consideration for program, site, and leisure, there was an interest in how two points form a line. The edges of windows form spaces, the edges of spaces form relationships within themselves, and spacial relationships form a museum inherently tied to a method of design. The vertical museum, deeper and taller than wide, finds its paths of movement in its directionality. The sensation of points becoming lines is fundamentally expressed by the very proportions of the bounding box. The shift from the outside to the interior is felt as one of material but also of visual complexity. The outside exposes the lines and the surface in collaboration, yet the inside is an experience both of concealment and enlightenment as the surfaces are revealed alone. The proportions of the individual galleries are legible from the outside as they reinforce the directionality of the site. The interior is separated into three major exhibition spaces with global circulation connecting them. The facing windows allow for a visual relationship between the galleries and interstitial spaces of the facade (including the cafe and the sculpture garden), while the street-facing windows establish a relationship with SoHo.

Axon Portion

Perspective

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 +143’

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+120’

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+98’

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Section

01. flourescent track lighting 02. fiberglass molding 03. primary steel structure 04. steel flange 05. steel subframe 06. insulation 07. aluminum subframe 08. waterproofing

Detail of Cross Section

07 Satellite City Summer 2014 Competition Entry Featured on CityVision Website With Kyle Branchesi

China incorporates the specific, and disperses the generic. The satellite cities that cover China depict a country that has produced the world within its borders: a scaled Paris pried apart from its roots, a medieval slice of Austria rebuilt brick by brick, a Manhattan devoid of life... all while the spitting image of the Plan Voisin flickers by every highway. Beijing’s satellite cities are often the exhaustion of ideas and their hasty executions; what sounded good at one board meeting are now limping monstrosities. Not always intended to be inhabited but rather seen as immense hood ornaments, these satellite cities impress the world by reproducing it. Meanwhile, what China gives the world is the matter that we all ignore: the plainest pencils, anonymous tennis shoes, the most standard shipping containers you’ve never seen... China offers the world ubiquity at alarming quantities and accepts debased artifacts in exchange. And though it adorns the bottom of virtually every generic object you encounter between your bedroom and your office, the only place we wishfully expect the stamp ‘Made in China’ is on the goods of all the world’s various Chinatowns. The Chinese government recently developed a new satellite city for Beijing, aptly named The Satellite City (TSC). Modeled not on the western culture that China has adopted as its own, but rather on the generic objects that it has been known to export unceasingly, TSC is the first city in China that represents the country’s contemporary face to the world. In its borders, mixed typologies are modeled after plungers and stacks of plates; infrastructure toggles through the three dimensions as the eye travels; and the names of neighborhoods are as coinable as “The Toilet Top District” and “The Chess Piece Corridor.” Like those preceding it, TSC is unobtainable to the citizens of Beijing. Alluring it may be yet intangible to the touch, TSC is not intended to alleviate the population density of Beijing and is instead another opportunity to generate empty labor for a government eager to work. And though its perimeter - visible from around and above Beijing - tells a different story than the advertisements suggest, Beijingers yearn for it and to break apart from the masses. They wish to forge a relationship with TSC, yet find their love unrequited. The following is from an advertisement for the Beijing Beautytek Plastic Surgery Center in Zhiyin Magazine: “Looking to get to The Satellite City but can’t quite make it? Find information on highly trained board-certified plastic surgeons in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery in Beijing. Our surgeons have been trained to practice rhinoplasty with your preference of tape dispenser, waffle cone, clothes hanger, and light bulb...Other surgeries have covered: wine bottle lifts, teacup tucks, and several types of augmentation such as arm/plunger, leg/ screwdriver, and torso/bicycle frame. We help you be the city you want to live in.”

Detail

Billboard for Satellite City Under Satellite City

Beijing Beautytek Plastic Surgery Center Under Satellite City

08 Roof Deck at MoMA PS1 Client: Erin Besler (www.erinbesler.com) Location: New York, NY Position: Designer, Collagist Other members of project team: Jamie Barron, Ian Besler, Kyle Branchesi, Ryan Conroy, Chris Gassaway, Devin Koba, Ingrid Lao, Bernhard Luthringshausen, Tori McKenna, Dami Olufowoshe, Tom Pompeani, Sai Rojanapirom, Evi Temmel, Tessa Watson

The roof occupies a fundamental position in architecture, creating inhabitable space both below and above. This is underscored by block party vernacular; we commonly hear admonitions to “raise the roof” or “tear the roof off,” and, even more hyperbolically, that the “roof is on fire.” Through these expressions, revelry is compounded with acts of architectural revision. Roof Deck repositions MoMA PS1’s existing roof and refits it into the courtyard, where it is activated as a social space across a spectrum of programs and experiences—from celebrity yoga to ecstatic celebration, from the collection of construction materials to exhibition through social media. Along with the summertime impulse to flaunt and reveal comes the struggle to be fit and get in shape. Paralleling this, the roof is made fit and is also the site of performance and physical fitness programming on the roof deck. The construction of the roof and deck exploit the tendency to accumulate waste that building practices typically produce. Rather than discard material remnants off-site, excess is cut and refit into the project for use. The roof’s gutter system redirects water that would otherwise go to waste into a collection and retention system, turning an otherwise mundane aspect of exterior architectural drainage into a feature that provides water fit for use. Borrowing from the language of the architectural building site, the always in-progress roof is made more fit as uses change and tempos shift.

Model Perspective

Dance Space

Pilates Space

Spin Space

Yoga Space

09 Facebook Mobile/Digital Westworld Client: SCPS Unlimited (www.scpsunlimited.com) Location: Los Angeles, CA Position: Designer, Animator, Renderer

To culminate the end of the year, Facebook produces a slideshow unique to each user. In 2014, an initiative to physicalize the slideshow was put forth, and a design and animation for a Facebook Mobile was devised. It consisted of 400 unique photo frames attached to several delicately balanced wires, and was intended to swing unpredictably through the space. It was installed in an emptied factory in Koreatown and was filmed over the course of a week.

HBO will soon be releasing the first season of Westworld, a series based on the science fiction western movie that premiered in 1973. The original was famous for being the first movie to employ CGI effects, and forty years later it is still challenging the relationship between naked visuality and computer generated imagery. The accompanying image is an animation still from the title sequence of Westworld.

Facebook Mobile, Front Perspective

Digital Westwood, Animation Still

10 YF Restaurant Summer 2015 Client: Fleetwood Fernandez (www.fleetwoodfernandez.com) and Yellow Fever (www.yellowfevereats.com) Location: Venice, California Position: Designer, Writer

Yellow Fever is an Asian bowl restaurant that was originally founded in Torrance, California. The restaurant found initial success from its controversial name, making the most disinterested drivers along Crenshaw Boulevard curious about what laid within. For its second outpost, YF purchased a site in Venice, within walking distance of Abbot Kinney Street. The owners asked for a design that focused less on the name of the restaurant as the affect of the color yellow. The restaurant is expected to be completed in Spring 2016.

YELLOW FEVER II 2560 LINCOLN BLVD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90291 APRIL 30, 2015

VIEW FROM LINCOLN BLVD

Perspective

11 Balloon Frame Client: Pita + Bloom (www.pita-bloom.com) Location: New York, NY Position: Designer Other members of project team: Kyle Branchesi,Tristan Brasseur, Emily Chen, Christina HyunKyung Cho, Adrian Cortez, Pil Sun Ham, Ida Hammarlund, Smita Lukose, Rachael McCall, Edwin Nourian, Kyle Onaga, David Ramirez, Mark A. Santa Ines, Marie-Sophie Starlinger, Freesia Torres, Asli Tusavul, Florencia Vetcher, Ruby Wu

Balloon Frame is a space of delineated planes that outline the shape of a familiar, yet unrecognizable form. The project aims to echo contemporary pop culture, local street art and the vivid perceptual experiences of watching parade balloons. Balloom Frame is made up of ten intersecting vertical planes which are contoured along its outer edge and inner voids. Each plane is surfaced with a vivid color rendition of an inflated and voluptuous three-dimensional form, challenging one’s perception of materiality while creating an immersive experience. The planes are the last iteration of a back and forth process where detailed and figural two-dimensional geometry is used to generate a balloon-like three-dimensional form. Horizontally the form is sliced at 18” above the ground to generate seating platforms, while the contours on the ground reflect what would be the shadow of the planes during a late afternoon in June. Balloon Frame looks to synthesize contemporary fabrication techniques with basic but innovative materials. In the same spirit of “balloon frame” construction that was developed to speedily construct lightweight framing to be lifted into place, Balloon Frame is prefabricated into large components and assembled on site. The color and graphic texture is printed on removable and recyclable vinyl which is then applied onto honeycomb torsion panels which can be re-used by industries such as door manufacturers and furniture fabricators. Structural steel is embedded within the honeycomb panels wherever the planes intersect as columns. The crisscross nature of the vertical planes describes the volume in its entirety, becoming a skeleton of a balloon-like form.

Study Models

Pool

Event Space

12 Museum of the History of the Motel Spring 2015 Installation With assistance from Kyle Branchesi, Ellen Den Herder, Kaiho Yu, Edwin Nourian, and Karen Hong

“There is no longer any transcendence or depth, but only the immanent surface of operations unfolding, the smooth and functional surface of communication.” -Jean Baudrillard

It’s no personal exaggeration to say that motel rooms are all the same. A decently experienced traveler could navigate one blindfolded: tv and dresser opposite a bed centered on the right wall, end table on either side, bibles below and lamps above. They are essentially arranged for the client with no face by the owner with an easy-answer catalogue, codified by the decades-long agreement made between thrifty motel owners and the even thriftier travelers that depend on them. Their shared desire for ease and convenience at the expense of a memorable transaction has produced a bad infinity of checks and balances. This is the domesticity game at its most transparent, a game in which suppliers and demanders are changing places constantly. Like waiting rooms and airplane cabins, motel rooms are designed to be accommodating yet ultimately unmemorable; willing by-products of the places where we really want to be making memories. But purgatory isn’t entirely undecorated either. Though customers are openly indifferent to the specific furnishings of their room for the night, they are on some level comforted by any sense of hominess that might pacify thoughts of the deal made between them and the stranger at the front desk; that this is not their bedroom and that they are actually thousands of miles away from home. Consider the art above the bed, for instance. It’s usually something nondeclarative and apolitical (horses, the ocean, a fabricated skyline…), not meant to be seen up close so much as fill up an otherwise blank wall. Their purpose is to satisfy a small part of some checklist, adding up to the estimation of anyone’s home away from home. In other words, the more generic the furniture, the more readily it can represent both everyone and no single person.

Modified Holiday Lodge Signage

Bed with Overnight Customers (Photo by Shane Reiner-Roth)

Bedside Table with Holy Bible and Lamp (Photo by Nicholas Korody)

Bathroom, Wall (Photo by Edwin Nourian)

Bathroom, Floor (Photo by Shane Reiner-Roth)

Brochure

13 Mas Context With Kyle Branchesi Spring/Summer 2015 Chicago, IL

Six Ways to Commemorate Celebrity Mishaps Project by TALL Shane Reiner-Roth and Kyle Branchesi

Figural Monuments

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In LA, if there was a spot and you knew that Beyonce chipped a nail on that spot, then every time you passed it you’d be like “Ah, here’s that parking lot where Beyonce chipped a nail!” And that means something, and you feel like a ghost, like a background character to this enormous stage, like nobody would ever notice you. Because in LA if you and 2000 people see a billboard and Beyonce is on it, you feel like this town belongs to her, and everyone else on the video store murals we’re just renting it from them, and wearing sunglasses and walking around pretending we belong.1 Zak Smith

Figural Monuments: Six Ways to Commerate Celebity Mishaps

Los Angeles is divided: some are celebrities, and the rest are not. The daily interactions that take place between these two classes create a distinct mental geography that is of great interest for non-celebrities; a map not invested in historic political events or natural disasters, but rather one at the intersection of the banal and the newsworthy. Figural Monuments (2014) is a project that attempts to commemorate the importance of celebrities to our collective memory. Memorials are placed at the sites of famous celebrity incidents and oversights around Los Angeles, and are disguised as governmental architecture one commonly sees within the city. The relationship between Los Angeles and Figural Monuments is linked to the city’s tenuous relationship with memory and its own history. This project challenges and confounds some of the issues that have often characterized the field of memorial design, as well as make permanent the celebrity mishaps that were once only gossip. Figural Monuments honor celebrities over non-celebrities Harris Demitropoulos, in attempting to establish the standards and ethics of memorial design, wrote that, “memorials [should] address their intended audience by accommodating a projection of the individual on their semantic matrix. As a subject, to be drawn to a memorial, I have to find a part of me in it.”2 While this may be a reasonable rule of thumb for many major cities, Los Angeles is uniquely divided by both automobile culture and fragmented communities. Their semantic matrix therefore lies not within themselves, but in celebrities to whom they have elected higher power and status. The constant stream of TMZ vans and Star Maps pamphlets for sale along Sunset Boulevard confirms the lengths to which the general population will hold celebrities over their heads. Though it lacks the solidity and implied significance of some other major cities, Los Angeles has a mythology as strong as that of the Greeks in celebrity culture. Many locals will recall the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire when asked where Biggie Smalls was shot, and more still can point out the Saks Fifth Avenue that caught Winona Ryder shoplifting on videotape. Celebrity culture supplies the collective memory of Los Angeles for those outside and within for one reason: a lot of people shoplift and get shot, but when it happens to a celebrity, it becomes that much more interesting.

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memory Figural collective Monuments confirm collective memory t.Figural Monuments confirm s On the subject of a city’s collective Rossi wrote, On the subjectmemory, of a city’sAldo collective memory, Aldo Rossi wrote, r “One can say that the“One city itself is the memory ofcollective memory of can say thatcollective the city itself is the its people, and like memory it is and associated with objects and its people, like memory it is associated with objects and places. The city is theplaces. locus of thecity collective memory.” The is the locus of theBuildcollective memory.” Buildings, like monuments,ings, are used as landmarks one as navigates like monuments, areasused landmarks as one navigates through a city. through a city. And when a stately piece of architecture is coupled by a And when a stately piece of architecture is coupled by a notable historical event (suchhistorical as the Round at theTable meetings at the notable eventTable (suchmeetings as the Round alAlgonquin Hotel in New York), it Hotel is easy argue forita is site’s Algonquin into New York), easysigto argue for a site’s significance. These sitesnificance. become landmarks those familiar withto those familiar with These sitestobecome landmarks their history. Yet Los Angeles doesYet notLos have many of these their history. Angeles does nothaphave many of these hapdpenstances to speakpenstances of. We are yet claim Columbus to to speak of.a We are yet Circle to claim a Columbus Circle or a Garibaldi Square,oreither because the political events don’t a Garibaldi Square, either because the political events don’t happen here or we simply choose past them. JantoRowen happen here to or look we simply choose look past them. Jan Rowen once observed that “to be observed able to choose what to be what you want to be once that “to be you ablewant to choose and how you want to and live, how without about socialworrying censure,about social censure, you worrying want to live, without is obviously more important to Angelenos than the that they is obviously more important tofact Angelenos than the fact that they 3 do not have a Piazza San Marco.” do not have a Piazza San Marco.”3 Given these conditions, Given Figural theseMonuments conditions,gathered Figural Monuments gathered celebrity blunders and celebrity placed blunders memorials and exactly placed where memorials they exactly where they were rumored to takewere place. rumored Some recall to take a murder place. Some or robbery, recall a murder or robbery, while others signify the while videos others of celebrities signify the bumping videos of their celebrities heads bumping their heads or tripping that once overwent sidewalks viral. Their that once collective went viral. Their collective sor tripping over sidewalks memory on political is not centered or academic on political achievements, or academic achievements, -memory is not centered but lies squarely on the butminutia lies squarely of anyon given the celebrity’s minutia of any everyday given celebrity’s everyday life. As we pour over the life.details, As we pour we not over only thegive details, themwe a higher not only give them a higher status than non-celebrities, status than but we non-celebrities, also validate the butimportance we also validate the importance of their every move. of their every move. Many people are aware, Many forpeople example, arethat aware, Hugh forGrant example, that Hugh Grant invited a prostitute toinvited his carain prostitute 1995, buttofew hisknow car inexactly 1995, but few know exactly where it took place. Automatic where it took Teller place. Machine Automatic 00023d2 Teller (Hugh Machine 00023d2 (Hugh Grant) is located on the Grant) intersection is locatedofon Dethe Longpre intersection and Courtney of De Longpre and Courtney Avenue, the site of the Avenue, allegation. the site Nowofthat the aallegation. memorial Now in visible that a memorial in visible at the site, visitors may at the visitsite, to remember visitors may thevisit famous to remember incident at the famous incident at an otherwise insignificant an otherwise intersection insignificant for pedestrians intersection or autofor pedestrians or automobile traffic. mobile traffic. r

Figural Monuments: Six Ways to Commerate Celebity Mishaps

HUGH GRANT Love Actually Automatic Teller Machine 00023d2 Center City West Hollywood

Figural Monuments are figural Geometric abstraction was arguably popularized by Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC in 1982. Prior to this point, memorials were almost entirely figural, embodying those honored with the highest level of verisimilitude and allegorical content. There were accompanying plaques with the honorees’ names and brief biographies, yet their focus was sculptures with faces and time-period clothes that were instantly recognizable and often scaled up. This was done to both increase their visibility and illustrate their importance. The Korean Memorial designed by Frank Gaylord, adjacent to the Vietnam Memorial, demonstrates the relative immediacy of the human figure in monumentality. The current method of geometric abstraction assumes that its audience is not only actively literate, but will also take time to read further into the nature of a piece. However, to assume this type of audience in Los Angeles would be the first mistake in local memorial design. With a pedestrian culture that is still yet to be seen, Los Angeles requires signage that can be read quickly and from distant vantage points. As well, David Gebhard has observed, “California’s mildness of climate, with the result-

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ing ability to cheaplying andability quickly structures, encourage[s] to erect cheaply and quickly erect structures, encourage[s] a non-serious view ofanot only architecture, butonly symbolism and but symbolism and non-serious view of not architecture, 4 4 salesmanship as well.” salesmanship as and well.” Sharp marble concrete Sharp marble solids, and when concrete solids, when displayed earnestly, have displayed little earnestly, resonancehave here.little resonance here. Bollards 2 and 3 (KimBollards Kardashian 2 and and 3 (Kim Kanye Kardashian West) rep-and Kanye West) represent the memorable resent formsthe of the memorable two celebrities forms of atthe thetwo exact celebrities at the exact moment the paparazzi moment distracted the paparazzi them fromdistracted their walk them out offrom a their walk out of a parking structure, resulting parkinginstructure, Kanye West resulting bumping in Kanye his head. West The bumping his head. The bollards portray the body bollards language portray that thecharacterized body language the that incicharacterized the incident, and they only present dent, and at certain they only times present of the atday. certain times of the day.

Figural Monuments are Figural obsessively Monuments site-specific are obsessively and sometimes site-specific and sometimes obstructive obstructive

Memorials have typically Memorials been placed have typically in parksbeen as traditional placed in parks as traditional artwork have been inartwork galleries: have in the been center in galleries: or out ofinthe theway center of or out of the way of a path of circulation that a path had ofbeen circulation established that had before beenit.established By their before it. By their -politeness, they are quickly politeness, accepted they are as memorials quickly accepted and doas notmemorials and do not leave room for speculation. leave room Figural for Monuments speculation.are Figural moreMonuments akin to are more akin to d the chalk outlines of murder the chalk scenes outlines than of its murder predecessors. scenes than This its predecessors. This level of site specificity level ensures of sitethat specificity the gravity ensures of one that celebrity’s the gravity of one celebrity’s blunder is regarded as blunder more essential is regarded to the as more way aessential city functions to the way a city functions

KIM KARDASHIAN & KANYE WEST Bollard 2 Kim Kardashian Bollard 3 Kanye West Golden Triangle Beverly Hills

MAS CONTEXT / 25 / LEGACY

KIM KARDASHIAN & KANYE WEST Bollard 2 Kim Kardashian Bollard 3 Kanye West Golden Triangle Beverly Hills

Figural Monuments: Six Ways to Commerate Celebity Mishaps

BIGGIE SMALLS Bus Stop 775 Wilshire / Fairfax Transit Hub Miracle Mile Los Angeles

than the ease of movement for everyone else. Biggie Smalls was murdered in front of The Petersen Automotive Museum on Fairfax and Wilshire. Though the permanence of this museum is currently under debate, the memory of Biggie Smalls dwarfs the architectural significance of this site and takes precedence. Bus Stop 775 - Wilshire/Fairfax Transit Hub (Biggie Smalls) takes up the majority of the sidewalk, requiring pedestrians to purposefully walk around or under the memorial. It appears as a solid clash of concrete and marble above fragile furniture. Detention Center 008 (Winona Ryder) poses as a supplementary security room for the adjacent Saks Fifth Avenue. Its location across the street is, according to publicly viewed security footage, as far as Winona Ryder ran with the five stolen dresses, only to be apprehended moments later. The building strikes both shoppers and general pedestrians as patently absurd in its detachment and overall distance from the Saks to which it formally belongs.

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WINONA RYDER Saks Fifth Avenue Detention Center 008 Wilshire District Beverly Hills

Figural Monuments are disguised as city architecture Because the impact of sculptures in parks or in front of buildings has diminished as they’ve been quickly regarded as “public art,” new relationships between memorials and the cities they’re in have to be drawn. Contemporary artists have established flexibility in the category by considering new relationships between art and its environment. As Rosalind Krauss had observed in 1979: Rather surprising things have come to be called sculpture [lately]: narrow corridors with TV monitors at the ends; large photographs documenting country hikes; mirrors placed at strange angles in ordinary rooms; temporary lines cut into the floor of the desert. Nothing, it would seem, could possibly give to such a motley of efforts the right to lay claim to whatever one might mean by the category of sculpture. Unless, that is, the category can be made to become almost infinitely malleable.5

Figural Monuments: Six Ways to Commerate Celebity Mishaps

M i n fi T p t f t t

ANGELYNE Parking Meter 4800cc82 Parking Meter 4800cc83 Golden Triangle Beverly Hills

t M a e d t f Architecture has often played a role in this categorical game, if not only because it has always been its backdrop and source of definition. The Figural Monuments are therefore more covertly placed in their urban environment than their predecessors. They are programmatically based on familiar objects within the city, such as ATMs, security booths, and bus stops. Rather than adorn standard box buildings with symbolic decoration like parade floats, the functionality of the series is willed by their outward figurality. The memorials therefore appear curiously out of place; like one-offs that stand proudly by their control groups. Parking Meters 4800cc82 and 4800cc83 (Angelyne) generally look and function like the other parking meters with which they share a row. But because they commemorate the time Angelyne attempted to avoid the paparazzi and her subsequent fall, these parking meters appear awkward and bashful compared to the rest. It seems that no plaque is necessary for viewers to interpret the mood of the incident that took place here, since none has been placed.

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Figural Monuments are fictional Marble, concrete, and granite have been the standard materials in memorial design for their apparent permanence and seriousness; this might be the one convention that continued from figurality to geometric abstraction without any major exceptions. These are heavy materials for heavy meaning, and a monument’s physical presence is proof of an event’s authenticity and importance. Many only see them in visual content and publications, yet fewer can claim to see the real thing. Monuments are an alternative for word-of-mouth and are intended to solidify memories in the ground. But the rumors about celebrities are often only that, and these memorials attempt to reflect this instability. The Figural Monuments are real as far as images are three-dimensional; they are five postcards exhibiting the images that accompany this essay, and nothing as of yet has been erected at the sites they describe. These postcards confirm collective memories to many through nearly weightless distribution, performing in a similar fashion to the social media that has lately become prevalent. The intention of this series is not to remind viewers of what would otherwise be forgotten, but rather to confirm what was generally brushed off as mere gossip. With Figural Monuments, our celebrity Schadenfreude is validated and our collective memory fortified. Los Angeles is torn between the have and the have-nots, a condition either self-inflicted or projected onto it by the rest of the world, and it is time to acknowledge this reality through intensive memorialization. Similar hierarchies exist in other cities—gangsters in Chicago, founding fathers in Philadelphia—but arguably none confound the concepts of civic memory and rights to fame quite like Los Angeles. 1

Zak Smith, “Celebrities and Los Angeles,” Artillary Magazine, April 26, 2009, 28.

Dimitropoulous Harris, “The Character of Contemporary Memorials,” April 17, 2011, accessed July 16, 2014, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4bj1d7pq

e, 3

Reyner Banham, “Introduction,” in Los Angeles; the Architecture of Four Ecologies (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), xx.

Jim Heimann and David Gebhard, “Introduction,” in California Crazy: Roadside Vernacular Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1980), xix.

Rosalind Krauss, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” October 8 (Spring 1979): 30-44.

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14 Clog Journal With Kyle Branchesi and Jing Yan Fall 2014 New York, NY

15 Pidgin Journal Forthcoming Princeton, NJ

Shane

BRICKS AND STICKERS

Reiner-Roth

FIGURE 1 Poster from “John Baldessari: BRICK BLDG, LG WINDOWS W/ XLENT VIEWS, PARTIALLY FURNISHED, RENOWNED ARCHITECT,” Museum Haus Lange. Krefeld, Germany, March 1 – July 19, 2009. Courtesy of John Baldessari.

42 “If I vibrate with vibrations other than yours, must you conclude that my flesh is

insensitive?”

w – Claude Cahun, Héroïnes

untested material palettes. For many, what looked stunning and rigid

on first construction soon crumbled under its own weight once the scaf-

folding was removed. Quick to rise, quick to fall.

he modern era is filled with testaments to poor aging. Eager to build

in big and fast numbers, its architects were often quick to select

a But Mies van der Rohe was famously one to be more vain than hasty.

While many architects communicated their allegiance to industrial

functionalism through the use of sturdy yet ultimately ruinous materials,

such as poured-in-place concrete for grain elevators or self-oxidizing metal for factories, Mies preferred his buildings clad in materials that

would last eternally. Here, his trademark use of stainless steel and mar-

ble ring true, though the heavy use of exposed brick in his early career

seems at first glance to be contradictory to this ambition.

a The Haus Lange, built in Krefeld, Germany, in 1928, is a telling example.

Unlike the hopeful purity of the usual modernist materials, the bricks

of the Haus Lange were selected and stacked in a decidedly imprecise

manner, a little chipped and a little uneven. This was Mies’s method of

‘pre-aging’ the building, ensuring that the house would mature as con-

tentedly as any other brick building before it. Peter Blake’s vilification of

modernist materials adequately sums up Mies’s sentiments at the time:

“Exposed, flat, poured-in place concrete surfaces will frequently stain and develop shrinkage cracks and are sure to look prison-grim under overcast

skies, whereas brick and stone can look quite beautiful in a rainstorm.” 1

SHANE REINER-ROTH

43 The choice of brick might seem at odds with the times, perhaps not forward-thinking enough for the shrewd observer. As Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock point out in The International Style, “the use of [exposed] brick tends to give a picturesqueness which is at variance with the fundamental character of the modern style.”2 But Mies was also more vain than adherent.

Despite the consequences, the one material he couldn’t avoid using—the

one that ages just as poorly as concrete and exposed metal combined, the one that fogs up, streaks, scratches and warps—was glass. As dedicated as Mies was to conceit, he also couldn’t deny his clients natural light, and

that meant lots of windows in places that were hard to reach. When the

Haus Lange aged, the bricks stayed perfectly imperfect while the glass

just became imperfect.

The house’s presence as a questionably aged object was challenged

when it was converted into a contemporary art museum several de-

cades later. In 2009, artist John Baldessari was given the keys to the conflicted building and potentially found a solution to Mies’s fear of aging. For his installation, Baldessari covered the exterior windows

with brick-patterned peel & stick contact paper to match Mies’s original

cladding. The stickers effectively transformed the home into one large

envelope of indecipherably various materials, one thick and the other

flat. And because the photos on the contact paper were elevations of the

then 81-year-old Haus Lange brick pattern, they were just as perfectly

imperfect as the bricks they emulated. On overcast days, they shared

the very same reddish hue.

The illusions continued past the entrance. Every window was covered from the inside with a still image of a Southern Californian nature scene.

SHANE REINER-ROTH

c FIGURE 2 Installation view from “John Baldessari: BRICK BLDG, LG WINDOWS W/ XLENT VIEWS, PARTIALLY FURNISHED, RENOWNED ARCHITECT,” Museum Haus Lange. Krefeld, Germany, March 1 – July 19, 2009. Courtesy of John Baldessari.

Some displayed a forest Some while displayed othersaan forest ocean while at perpetual others anhigh ocean tide. at perpetual The high tide. The

gallery lighting boregallery no shadows lighting and bore theno stickers shadows no sunlight, and the stickers rendering no sunlight, rendering

the interior as far removed the interior fromas time’s far removed grasp asfrom a vacuum time’sofgrasp space. asIn a vacuum exof space. In ex-

ecution, Baldessari ecution, not only Baldessari slowed down notthe only aging slowed process downofthe theaging Hausprocess of the Haus

Lange; he nearly brought Lange;ithe to nearly a standstill. brought it to a standstill.

If considered a permanent If considered fixture, a permanent could Baldessari’s fixture,paper-thin could Baldessari’s appa- paper-thin appa-

ritions save face? Though ritions the saveman face?who Though coined the “God maniswho in the coined details” “God is in the details”

himself might not himself have preferred might not it, contact have preferred paper does it, contact align with paper a does align with a

certain materialist evolution. certain materialist What bricks evolution. represented What bricks for several represented cenfor several cen-

turies in the building turies industry—a in the building durable industry—a and economical durable means and economical of means of

surfacing—is essentially surfacing—is what peel essentially & stick contact what peel paper & stick represents contact forpaper represents for

the greater part of this thecentury greater(with part of the this exception, century (with of course, the exception, that it does of course, that it does

not insulate, but rather not insulate, signifiesbut insulation). rather signifies It is one insulation). of this century’s It is one of this century’s

cure-all products for cure-all its ability products to mimic for its anything ability in to any mimic state anything of decay, in any state of decay,

allowing it to appear allowing as nostalgically it to appear ruinous as nostalgically or timelessly ruinous pristine or timelessly as pristine as

one desires. The building one desires. industry Thehas building appropriated industrycontact has appropriated paper like contact paper like

a blank canvas or a Photoshop a blank canvas stamp, or awith Photoshop homeowners stamp,not with farhomeowners behind. not far behind.

In the case of the Haus In the Lange, case of it was the Haus able to Lange, hyperbolize it was able a specifically to hyperbolize a specifically

modern ruggedness. modern ruggedness.

To go further, as museum To go further, director asMartin museum Hentschel director observes Martin Hentschel of the observes of the

installation, “the block installation, bonded brickwork “the blockgives bonded thebrickwork impression gives of solid the impression of solid

masonry, [although]masonry, it is in fact [although] superimposed; it is in fact the walls superimposed; have only athe ru-walls have only a ru-

dimentary functiondimentary as supports. function In otheraswords: supports. the brickwork In other words: is largely the brickwork is largely

3 3 Though he Though he ornamental, placingornamental, it into the same placing category it intoasthe wallpaper!” same category as wallpaper!”

claimed to be performing claimed as to the be‘contra-Mies,’ performing as Baldessari’s the ‘contra-Mies,’ real task Baldessari’s was real task was

to carry Mies’s lust for to masks carry Mies’s into the lustnext for century. masks into Conveniently the next century. enough, Conveniently enough,

,contact

paper’s inability contact topaper’s self-support inability means to self-support that its onlymeans available that its only available

function is always asfunction the mask is for always something as the mask else. for something else.

SHANE REINER-ROTHSHANE REINER-ROTH

FIGURE 3 Installation view from “John Baldessari: BRICK BLDG, LG WINDOWS W/ XLENT VIEWS, PARTIALLY FURNISHED, RENOWNED ARCHITECT,” Museum Haus Lange. Krefeld, Germany, March 1 – July 19, 2009. Courtesy of John Baldessari.

47 Fakery often follows closely behind vanity. A wealth of research goes into finding material alternatives to tedious and expensive things (even when those methods weren’t especially tedious or expensive to begin with), and there is no question that the progression from bricks and nature scenes to stickers reflects a profit-driven venture bigger than Mies and Baldessari. This situation is promoted by a market with bigger and faster numbers than the modernists could ever have conceived. For those that benefit from the many uses of contact paper, integrity is overrated when it can be replaced with its stunt double. To ditch the trowel for a staple gun expedites the building process (both in its erection and demolition) while transparently communicating that same motive for ease and convenience; it is within this cultural standard that Baldessari applied stickers to windows. Over time, the two bricks would reveal their differences more apparently: Mies’s destined to sprout a little mossy green around the edges, while Baldessari’s likely to fade a little in the sunlight. However, with the proper adhesive and some light maintenance, the two could look quite beautiful in a rainstorm.

NOTES 1

Blake, Peter, Form Follows Fiasco: Why Modern Architecture Hasn’t Worked (New York, NY: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1977), 42.

Johnson, Philip and Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, The International Style (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company: Reissue edition 1997), 37.

Hentschel, Martin, “A House with a Twinkle in its Eye,” in John Baldessari: Brick Bldg, Lg Windows W/ Xlent Views, Partially Furnished, Renowned Architect (Bielefeld, Germany: Kerber Verlag, 2010), 13.

SHANE REINER-ROTH

16 Log Journal With Kyle Branchesi Spring/Summer 2015 New York, NY

Shane Reiner-Roth 05/06/1991 Shanereinerroth@gmail.com +1 818 421 0872 www.talltalltall.com www.everyverything.com