Friday, June 15th brought a transformation to SCI-Arc Gallery as Art District’s premier Architecture Academy presents Environment[al], featuring the work of architects, designers and landscape architects. exploring the sounds of our environment at Sci-Arc.
Through the construction of landscapes and substrates the exhibition space is designed as a facsimile of the soil conditions that are found in the Owens Valley [to the North East of Los Angeles, the source of half of the water for Los Angeles, brought to us by the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
A sound map of the LA River is accessed through proximity sensors integrated within the exhibition’s landscape. When gallery visitors interact with the plants, sounds recorded at different points along the river will become audible, conjuring the diverse environments of the river. The work of each of the exhibition participants is installed or projected into a series of concave receptacles within the landscape. The exhibition features both visions for the future of architecture as well as architectural applications in the context of environmental and climatic change.
SCI-Arc’s Environment[al] also examines contemporary attitudes toward the environment in a post-digital context, the capacity of constructed natures to produce admixtures of the natural and the synthetic and the changing character of the environment in the context of technological innovation.
Taking into account recent approaches to our understanding of environment and contemporary modes of ecological awareness, the exhibition considers the possibility of environments where qualities are fused with objects not normally associated with them. Sites, objects, and spaces become estranged to engender multiple authenticities and produce a fusion between architectural form and forms germane to constructed natures.
Environment[al] includes works by Izaskun Chinchilla [Izaskun Chinchilla Architects], Enric Ruiz Geli [Cloud 9], Carme Pinós [Estudio Carme Pinós], Wolf Prix [Coop Himmelb(l)au], Gilles Retsin, and Günther Vogt [Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten]. The exhibition is curated by Herwig Baumgartner and Marcelyn Gow.
The exhibition discussion at 5pm included Herwig Baumgartner, Violeta Burckhardt, Izaskun Chinchilla, Vittoria Di Palma, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Enric Ruiz Geli, Marcelyn Gow, Gilles Restin, Marrikka Trotter and Gunther Vogt. The exhibit runs June 15th – August 26th. For more information visit www.sciarc.edu
