Surface has a long standing relationship with architecture and has been the primary component through which we communicate architectural composition. However the less obvious contributor that has had its hand in the making of architecture is the line. The line has typically been the ghostwriter for compositions that have been manifested through surface. However surface has the potential to become a canvas for other rhetoric outside those of the lines’ and can dilute the lines’ original aesthetic intention. The ambition of this project is to remove the surface avatar and reveal the line as the protagonist of this project.
A figural arrangement or movement is often illustrated with a line. Contextual forces are used to agitate the surfaces of the building where intense moments unrest yield an unraveling of the lines within. The relationship of line to line and surface to line presents opportunities for different types of spacial configurations for the program. The lines bundle and splay for varying degrees of saturation to fulfill a variety of spacial and programatic requirements.
The project by Fernando Herrera is for a new LACMA campus. A campus is defined as a collection of buildings belonging to a single entity. The product of this line accumulation is harnessed to address the campus typology within the urban fabric, the lines unraveling present the opportunity to spawn both open-air spaces and bundles to form enclosures where needed. The implication of this surface dilution in the campus configuration becomes a collection of open pockets rather than the familiar sprawl of buildings. In this usurpation of material presence, the line is presented as a vernacular spawn from surface. A vernacular expressing the capacity of lines to make densities of form.
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