SCI-Arc is pleased to present En Pointe, a new installation in the SCI-Arc Gallery designed by Los Angeles architect Heather Roberge. An array of architectural objects, En Pointe reflects on the historical and spatial significance of the column as both object and series. Inspired by Henry N. Cobb’s hypostyle hall recently on exhibit at the school, Roberge envisioned a group of columns poised on blade-like fulcrums, defining dynamic spaces below. In order to achieve a balanced state, the mass and silhouette of each column is eccentrically distributed to stabilize its adjacent columns. Thus while unstable individually, the columns enter a stable state when grouped, through the adjacency and specificity of its neighbors.

En Pointe explores the column’s formal order to question the nature of stability and the articulation of space under the influence of conceptual, tectonic, and material pressures.  To complement the full scale installation, the show includes a collection of historical and contemporary case study projects highlighting the column’s role in architectural innovation. This genealogy reveals changing notions of space in architecture and provokes thoughtful reflection on the nature of the column. 

Materially, the exhibition extends the potential of planar elements in the construction of the column. It uses a wrapper of formed metal panels to produce enclosure and perform structurally. This invents a column type located somewhere between the surface active structure of Candela and the section active structure of Mies van der Rohe. Roberge’s exhibition proposes an active engagement with history as a robust reservoir of insight into the nature of the column. It presents a historiography of the column that aims to be neither a conclusive nor an exhaustive survey, but rather a particular genealogy intended to speculate on the relationship of the column to disciplinary notions of space and material. The installation draws on these insights to cross-pollinate historical cases with one another and to propose one of numerous possible futures for the column.

Heather Roberge is an award-winning designer and educator in Los Angeles. She is principal of Murmur: Architecture and Environments and is associate professor at UCLA, where she directs the undergraduate program in Architectural Studies. Roberge’s research and professional work investigates the spatial, structural, and atmospheric potential of digital technologies on the theory and practice of building. Her work emphasizes innovative approaches to material, craft, and manufacturing expanding design vocabulary with mixtures of tradition and technology. The work has been widely published and exhibited in the U.S. and abroad. Prior to founding Murmur, Roberge was co-principal of Gnuform together with Jason Payne (B.Arch ‘94). Her projects with Gnuform included Purple Haze, a finalist in the PS1/MOMA’s Young Architects Program in 2006, and the NGTV Bar, which received an AIA Los Angeles design award also in 2006. With Murmur, Roberge was widely recognized for her contribution to digital design discourse. Her proposal for the Succulent House received an AIA|Next LA design award in 2011, while the Vortex House was nominated for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize for Emerging Architecture in 2014.

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