Slump Model
Woodbury University Wedge Gallery, 2019
This installation is a half-scale model of a villa in the Yucatán. The villa has a large building and a small one that share the same three-step facade. The installation joins those two facades into a single form and sets them in perspective, the small facade in front, the large behind, projected so the steps line up exactly. That form is fitted to the plan of Woodbury University's Wedge Gallery.
It’s built from reinforced kraft paper, using craft techniques meant for much smaller models, and held together by nothing but tape. At this scale the paper can't hold the form. The installation slumps, and the steps that were precise go slack. The perspective was set digitally and exactly; the paper leaves it behind the moment the model takes on its own load.
This is tape tectonics: a structure that answers to nothing but its own weight. It is also a return to paper architecture after the digital turn, a form that begins in exact geometry and ends in collapse.
VIDEO SCI-Arc Channel
LOCATION Woodbury University
TEAM Jixun Wen, Julie Riley
INSTALLATION Dutra Brown, Jixun Wen, Julie Riley, Tamara Birghoffer
PHOTOS Marten Elder
- Installation View
- Installation View, Detail
- Installation View, Interior Small
- Installation View, Interior Large
- Installation View, Detail
- Installation View, Detail
- Installation View, Detail
- Geometry, Slumped
- Paper Model, 1:25
- Paper Model, 1:10
- Paper Model, 1:2
- Plan
- Corner Elevation
- Post-Installation Model