Los Angeles Art District - Photo Collage

Recently I took a group of students to Los Angeles in preparation for our next studio project - a BodyArt Studio/Tattoo Parlor. The site is in the heart of the Art (Warehouse) District, about a block away from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). At first glance the combination of graffiti art and rusticated architecture is impressive and provides an aesthetic milieu of texture, color and energy. This palimpsestic canvas of layered history is juxtaposed by a VOID. The void is a construction (or deconstruction), developed through an elimination of the urban context and local history. The students have been asked to [re]claim this void and interject a self-defined, process-driven architectural response.

Below are a couple of photo collages that I put together. I believe that they capture the essence of the place and help to express its unique characteristics and tectonics.

Collage 01: The human experience is always different than what is captured on film. Each snapshot represents a unique moment in time; captured and preserved. The accumulation of each image begins to reconstruct an ever changing world and its elements. As I reconstructed this experience I realized, in amazement, at the voids and slivers of negative spaces that have been left. At times these slivers create visible scars on this tapestry while other moments are completely neglected or omitted all together - leaving the mind to attempt to fill in the blanks and reconsider reality.

Collage 02: Rhythm, pattern, movement, order: All expressions of the contextual condition. Perhaps less experiential, this collage attempts to capture the structural and rhythmic phenomenon that occur on the site. Each panel depicts the "bays" of the structures; beginning with a glimpse of the street-scape, then warehouse, next fencing, returning to warehouse and back again to the street. You suddenly notice the breaking down of the site into smaller modules that can begin to relate more closely to the human scale and experience. The void in the middle of the block, although larger in scale, is actually more intimate and inviting (despite the restrictive fencing that somehow was breached by inquisitive students).