The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Lowell includes the renovation and addition to an existing outdated facility. Located within close proximity to downtown Lowell, the new club will include 65,000 sq ft of space. The new design makes a strong connection with the adjacent Clemente Park and the National Historic Park Canal Parkway.
OUT OF MEMORY
SCI-ARC GALLERY, LOS ANGELES, CA
Out of Memory for the SCI-Arc Gallery in downtown Los Angeles was an experiential piece: a convergence of sound, material, light, form, and technology. Memory was the vehicle; the familiar was the impetus. The installation proposed a new structural materiality through the use of renewable polyurethane foam as a complete building assembly. Layers of closed cell foam (used structurally) and open cell foam (used acoustically) combined to create it. The pure geometry of the parabola provided a natural self-structural form.
LOCATION
SCI-Arc Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
PROGRAM
Exhibition
SIZE
1,500 sq ft
STATUS
Completed 2011
DISTINCTIONS
National AIA Award
American Architecture Award
Interior Design Best of Year Award
Prague Quadriennial
Istanbul Biannale
CLIENT
SCI-Arc
COLLABORATORS
Machineous Fabrications
Buro Happold, Structural
Nous Engineering, Structural
KGM Lighting
Hoover McKay Conant Acoustics
A site-specific composition by world-renowned composer Ken Ueno accompanied the installation. The soundscape explored the spatialization of sound within the gallery, providing an ever-changing mobile, with software designed specifically for the installation. Resonance was exploited in the acoustically absorptive space. Each layer of sound related to an existing environmental sound and reenacted a memory of it. Through experiencing the aestheticized memory of the environmental sounds, one’s relationship with them was transformed.
The interior surface of the parabolic structure was a three-dimensional representation of the musical composition. Realized through on-site, six-axis robotic milling, the sonic contours were derived from the sound contained within. A mapping of frequency based on a spectrogram of the composition was translated into points and vectors providing a framework for the digitally modeled three-dimensional surface. The data was then used to robotically carve the volume’s interior surface.
The spiraling geometry and acoustically absorptive material magnified both the spatial and the aural. Notions of memory were challenged. Traces of the ambient, combined with visions of the past, present, and future, heightened one’s awareness of the space, while altering perceptions. The piece transcended the original vision. The final outcome was derived from the act of making, and the memory of that act was eclipsed by the residual. Only the remnant of our pursuit remained in the gallery afterward.
