M&A is a research center dedicated to pushing new and underused ideas for landscape and architecture into view. Twice a year, they hold experimental installations in their courtyard.
Their current installation, created by designer Rob Ley, is titled Serial Departure:
"With your fingers, squeeze your laptop screen. That disturbed pressure pattern you see represents the contact point between multiple parallel planes, an interruption of coexisting systems. Where your fingers squeeze, the exterior plastic layer is compressed against the liquid crystal strata, and a new condition is created.In addition to their installations, M&A also hosts a series of lectures and workshops throughout the summer. If you happen to be in the Los Angeles area, check out their website for dates and times.Serial Departure explores the space of this phenomenon by applying pressure to typical construction processes to see if they can create unexpected ripples of new possibilities. Architecture has alsways been based on a logic of stacking and assembly, but how does bending, as an operation, change our understanding of shingling and framing? Serial Departure capitalizes on the understanding of modulation and distortion beyond that of design concept and metaphor. Through both the surrogate use of molds and more interestingly, by applying forces directly on the materials through a variable jig, techniques of material coercion, teasing, and manipulation are integrated with the grid of aggregation, creating new effects in both the visual and the spatial."
Link: Materials & Applications
Designer: Rob Ley, Urbana
