Project completed in partnership with Joseph Bodwin for a UCLA topic studio entitled “Chasing Skirts: Speculations on the Midrise Tower” under Heather Roberge. The brief called for the integration of a hotel and film postproduction facilities on two urban Hollywood blocks, with the requirement that teams use a conceptual approach Roberge identifies as ‘sheet logics’. As a studio we investigated tailoring and fashion techniques and their potential application to architecture with special attention to the sheet, the seam, and to production of silhouette.  The use of sheet logics attempts to produce excitement of form and new use-value through sheet topology while avoiding the perceived pitfalls of solid logics and ‘blobitecture’.

Our project employs a multi-layered approach to sheet logics, with major volume-generating operations employed on an opaque concrete sheet suspended above and interfacing with the street level, with finer pleated tailoring on a translucent metal-mesh upper layer above.  The lower concrete sheet is wrapped and gathered to allow for novel circulation and access routes, and raised to provide area for program below.  The upper translucent layer is pleated at various scales; the smaller to provide linear canopies, and the larger to create volumes for the hotel program.  Several large glazed program block intrusions pierce both concrete and mesh layers, tying the strata of the project together with the street and underground parking levels.  The application of sheet logics to the largely horizontal layout of the project constitutes a renewed, more interconnected and free-flowing version of the mid-century mat building typology.