Selected Work Curriculum Vitae 01
Dear Architecture, “Becoming Upside-Down” Published Work
02
I Was An Important House That Day Personal Work
03
Everyverything Student Work (Advisors: Florencia Pita and Marcelyn Gow)
04
Suspended Animation Student Work (Advisor: Marcelyn Gow)
05
Infraordinary Student Work (Advisor: Andrew Atwood)
06
Museum of the Captive Lotus Student Work (Advisor: Darin Johnstone)
07
Satellite City Personal Work
08
Rooftop Deck at MoMa PS1 Professional Work (Employer: Erin Besler / Besler & Sons)
09
Facebook Mobile/Digital Westworld Professional Work (Employer: SCPS Unlimited)
10
YF Restaurant Professional Work (Employer: Fleetwood Fernandez Architects)
11
Balloon Frame Professional Work (Employer: Florencia Pita and Jackilin Bloom)
12
Museum of the History of the Motel Exhibition
13
Clog Journal, “History of the World Trade Center, Part II” Published Work
14
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
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”
Designed elements for MoMA PS1 Competition Entry, ‘Balloon Frames,’ and produced accompanying book.
Lunch Journal / summer 2015 / charlottesville, va / uvalunch.com
Andrew Atwood (First Office) / assistant curator / 2013 / downtown los angeles, ca / firstoff.net
One Night Stand LA / summer 2015 / los angeles, ca / uvalunch.com
Assisted in installation of carpets, fans, pedestals, and paint for the exhibition ....And Pedestals.
“Strangely Familiar: A Study of Everything Between Every Single Thing” “Museum of the History of the Motel”
Research Experience
MVT Journal / forthcoming / cambridge, uk
Joe Day / assistant curator / 2015 - present / los angeles, ca and jakarta, indonesia / deegandaydesign.com
IntJournal /
MyKukun / writer / 2015 - present / online / mykukun.com
Edge Condition / summer 2014 / with kyle branchesi / edgecondition.net
Providing research and written content for upcoming installation.
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.
“Real Figments”
winter 2014 / intjournal.com
“Kill Bill and the Erosion of the Movie Set” “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
Installation View
03 Everyverything Spring 2014 Advisors: Florencia Pita, Marcelyn Gow, Jeffrey Kipnis, Dora Epstein-Jones, Thom Mayne Thesis Merit Award
“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.� -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
Axon, Animation Still
Axon, Animation Still
Chouse to Ball and Back
Installation View
04 Suspended Animation Spring 2014 Advisor: Marcelyn Gow
“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.” -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 plinth’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
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
THERE BE A WORLD, AND BY SURPASSING THIS NEGATION TOWARD ITS OWN POSSIBILITIES IT REVEALS THE "THISES" AS INSTRUMENTAL-THINGS. BUT WHEN WE SAY THAT THE FOR-ITSELF IS-IN-THE-WORLD, THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE WORLD, WE MUST BE CAREFUL TO REMEMBER THAT THE WORLD EXISTS CONFRONTING CONSCIOUSNESS AS AN INDEFINITE MULTIPLICITY OF RECIPROCAL RELATIONS WHICH CONSCIOUSNESS SURVEYS WITHOUT PERSPECTIVE AND CONTEMPLATES WITHOUT A POINT OF VIEW. FOR ME THIS GLASS IS TO THE LEFT OF THE DECANTER AND A LITTLE BEHIND IT; FOR PIERRE, IT IS TO THE RIGHT AND A LITTLE IN FRONT. IT IS NOT EVEN CONCEIVABLE THAT A CONSCIOUSNESS COULD SURVEY THE WORLD IN SUCH A WAY THAT THE GLASS SHOULD BE SIMULTANEOUSLY GIVEN TO IT AT THE RIGHT AND AT THE LEFT OF THE DECANTER, IN FRONT OF IT AND BEHIND IT. THIS IS BY NO MCANS THE CONSEQUENCE OF A STRICT APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF IDENTITY BUT BECAUSE THIS FUSION OF RIGHT AND LEFT, OF BEFORE AND BEHIND, WOULD RESULT IN THE TOTAL DISAPPEARANCE OF "THISES" AT THE HEART OF A PRIMITIVE INDISTINCTION. SIMILARLY IF THE TABLE LEG HIDES
THE DESIGNS IN THE RUG FROM MY SIGHT, THIS IS NOT THE RESULT OF SOME FINITUDE AND SOME IMPERFECTION IN MY VISUAL ORGANS, BUT IT IS BECAUSE A RUG WHICH WOULD NOT BE HIDDEN BY THE TABLE, A RUG WHICH WOULD NOT BE EITHER UNDER IT OR ABOVE IT OR TO ONE SIDE OF IT, WOULD NOT HAVE ANY RELATION OF ANY KIND WITH THE TABLE AND WOULD NO LONGER BELONG TO THE "WORLD" IN WHICH THERE IS THE TABLE. THE IN-ITSELF WHICH IS MADE MANIFEST IN THE FORM OF THE THIS WOULD RETURN TO ITS INDIFFERENT SELF-IDENTITY. EVEN SPACE AS A PURELY EXTERNAL RELATION WOULD DISAPPEAR. THE CONSTITUTION OF SPACE AS A MULTIPLICITY OF RECIPROCAL RELATIONS CAN BE EFFECTED ONLY FROM THE ABSTRACT POINT OF VIEW OF SCIENCE; IT CANNOT BE LIVED, IT CAN NOT EVEN BE REPRESENTED. THE TRIANGLE WHICH I TRACE ON THE BLACKBOARD SO AS TO HELP ME IN ABSTRACT REASONING IS NECESSARILY TO THE RIGHT OF THE CIRCLE TANGENT TO ONE OF ITS SIDES, NECESSARILY TO THE EXTENT THAT IT IS ON THE BLACKBOARD. AND MY EFFORT IS TO SURPASS THE CONCRETE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIGURE TRACED IN CHALK BY NOT INCLUDING ITS RELATION TO ME IN MY CALCULATIONS ANY
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
Second Floor
Section One
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
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
08 Roof Deck at MoMA PS1 Client: Erin Besler / Besler&Sons (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.
Dance 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
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)
Brochure
13 Clog Journal With Kyle Branchesi and Jing Yan Fall 2014 New York, NY
14 Log Journal With Kyle Branchesi Spring/Summer 2015 New York, NY