“Some Walls From Unbuilt Houses”

Clark Thenhaus + Endemic Architecture

Armstrong Gallery | Kent, OH
February 10–March 6, 2020

// “Some Walls From Unbuilt Houses is an installation at Kent State CAED of full – or nearly full – scale wood-framed walls biopsied from houses designed by Endemic Architecture from between 2016 to 2020. Particular attention was given to a common feature in all of these houses: the curled wall room. As walls curl they make small rooms, inviting behaviors such as crying, pouting, reading, loving, thinking, studying, stretching, playing, cuddling, shouting, contemplating, hiding, writing, napping, eating, or gathering and are designed with faux fur, faux leather, wood shingle, reflective wall paper, iridescent vinyl, shaped felt, plywood, and painted surfaces.

These biopsied walls from the unbuilt houses were re-composed in the gallery as an enfilade oscillating visitor’s experience from occupying finished rooms to moving within the pockets, or pochè, between them. In other words, visitor’s continuously move between and through finished rooms and circulatory pochè while simultaneously looking through and across an enfilade of variegated rooms and materials. In some cases what I call Poche Still Life’s are encountered between rooms or walls which reveal diorama-like scenes displaying artifacts from the labor involved in constructing the walls. In other instances, stud piles are found on the floor, suggesting the space of the gallery is a site of ongoing construction. Plan drawings from which the curled walls originate are found tucked into nooks and crannies, enticing visitors to bend down, peer up, look behind, through, and into the walls in search of more layers or spaces.”

text: Endemic Architecture

installation team: Aidan Crossey, Aileen Lin, Allison Baker, Branden Hudak, Feyza Mutlu, Jonathan Bonezzi, Kyle Troyer, Logan West, Mike Bonezzi, Ryan Lane, Yu-ting Chang

special thanks to Mike Bonezzi for wall fabrication and construction

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