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‘Currents’exhibition houses diverse mediums from students of Department of Architecture and Urban Design

Work by Colin Prothero and Ryan Wilson are on display at “Currents” in Perloff Hall.

Currents: Fall 2010
Through March 18
Perloff Gallery 1318, FREE

By Christine Rendon

Jan. 20, 2011 12:30 a.m.

Jim Summers

Installations by architecture and urban design students Alejandro Alvarado, Charlie Heid, Jacob Semler and Andrew Kim are among featured fall 2010 students’ work at the “Currents” exhibition, currently on view in Perloff Hall through March 18. The designs feature a variety of mediums ranging from cement to wood, ceramics and fabric.

An eight-story building model currently on display in Perloff Hall contains the beginnings of an imaginary apartment complex to be constructed in Los Angeles.

However, this fantasy structure is designed entirely out of cloth.

The work, titled “Pillow House,” was created by architecture graduate Michael Frederick and is featured in “Currents,” an exhibition by UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

The exhibit highlights the best of the department’s student work from the fall quarter.

Each studio within the department picked its two best students to showcase their work.

For example, Heather Roberge, associate vice chair and assistant professor, chose among her students’ designs of single-family residences in Santa Monica.

“Every studio being offered in the department contributes two projects to the exhibition so that everyone in the school and people in the larger community can see what works students are doing,” Roberge said.

In the case of Frederick’s studio, students formed teams of two and utilized media that were assigned to them by instructors, and over the course of the fall quarter they developed single-family dwellings.

Frederick’s team was given fabric.

“Each team was given a material to work with, so ours was fabric. Other teams had metal or wood,” Frederick said.

“Then you had to design a house around the material concept.”

Frederick worked under the tutelage of lecturer Michael Ra and co-lecturer Jeffrey Kock, both of whom headed Frederick’s studio on campus.

As part of Frederick’s studio’s assignment, Kock and Ra assigned each team in their studio a buildable medium to employ in order to construct a single-family suburban home in Los Angeles.

“Michael and Jeffrey’s starting point for the studio was that at some point way in the future … we may run out of land in Los Angeles,” Frederick said. “But people are not necessarily going to want to give up the idea of the single-family suburban home and live in the apartment condo situation.”

In order to combat this possible scenario, Ra proposed various different mediums for his students to utilize, such as cement, wood, ceramics and of course, fabric.

By using an eight-floor building model as a starting point, each floor represented a different medium that the students would ultimately design around.

“There was a little bit of speculation in the beginning about “˜So, could you replicate suburbia but stack it vertically,'” Frederick said. “What we were doing was developing some sort of structural system that each one of those material house systems would be designed within.”

Ra further described the eight-story model, as each floor designated a particular project.

Each floor was designed with a particular theme in mind, whether it be concrete, wood or fabric.

The students worked around this model to visualize and design their own homes, based upon their given elements.
“Imagine there is a building with only the floors,” Ra said.

“Basically you’ll see a physical model of the building and there’s eight floors to it and inside of these floors is a house.”

According to Roberge, “Currents” becomes more than an opportunity to simply showcase student talents; it transmits new ideas that the L.A. community can ultimately learn from.

“It allows the department to present what its community thinks is important,” Roberge said.

Roberge said the exhibits by the department offer an opportunity to critique problems within the community, and through these exhibitions, possible solutions are offered.

“That would be our hope, is that some of what we propose, whether it be fantastical or pragmatic, really allows people to imagine what kinds of cities and spaces they can inhabit,” Roberge said.

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Christine Rendon
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