Credit: Paul Krist

“In an ensemble, the tone of a singular instrument becomes difficult to distinguish at the moment when all of its players strike a note,” explains the German-born, LA-based designer Paul Krist, a recent graduate of the Southern California Institute of Architecture’s M.Arch II program. “Each sound vibrates to produce a unifying harmony, an emergent sensation.”

For his senior thesis project, Ensemblespiel, Krist attempts to translate this organizational strategy from music to architecture. His project takes form as a lush short film that investigates the evocative and affective potential of objects. And, indeed, the film, which was a finalist for the coveted Gehry Prize, looks something like a Flemish still-life forced into motion (and then injected with a healthy dose of sci-fi).

My memories of rooms most intimate to me are full of objectsThere’s no dialogue and little amounting to action in Ensemblespiel, yet the arrangement of objects and the speculative, digitally-rendered spatial interventions are sufficient to keep the viewer engaged for the film’s duration. Rather than inventing a pure architectural form floating in empty space, Krist investigates the role that objects have on the experience of a space.

“I wanted to make a project that goes beyond the conventional domestic archetypes to include the influence of the things with which we populate our rooms,” Krist explains, noting that the original impetus for the film was a memory of the kettle in his childhood kitchen. “My memories of rooms most intimate to me are full of objects."

According to Krist, the project appropriates a series of strategies for the production of atmosphere from Sylvia Lavin’s popular essay, “The Temporary Contemporary”: namely, “accumulation, lamination, decoration, colouration, agitation, plastification, and environmentalisation.” These are applied selectively to the basic components of a home: wall, ceiling, and floor.

I want to convey the ineffable qualities of a building or a roomAccording to Krist, the film makes use of traditional architectural techniques of representation, but as just “one layer among many other processes”. For him, film fosters “immediacy and immersion”, and should be considered an architectural medium in its own right—one that Krist plans to continue to explore after graduation.

"I will continue to investigate the potential of cinematic film as a new medium for architecture,” he states. “I want to convey the ineffable qualities of a building or a room or an experience in a way that feels as close as possible to actually being there.”

Krist is currently seeking to screen the film at festivals, but until the full piece is available, you can watch the trailer for Ensemblespiel here: