Dungeons and Diptychs

In this studio, proposals were developed for 2,000 – 3,000 sf additions to one of three Frank Lloyd Wright Mayan Revival textile block houses in Los Angeles: the Storer House, the Millard House and the Freeman House.

Throughout the course of the semester, we engaged representation not only as a method of documentation, but also translation, transformation and production. We considered our additions as copies, doubles and diptych halves that are both like and unlike the houses from which they are derived and to which they are attached. Using existing architectural documentation, we produced precise but inaccurate reproductions of our selected houses that maintained certain qualities and characteristics of the originals, but also artifacts of the techniques used to develop them.

Just as Wright’s original houses have been transposed into the worlds of fantasy and science fiction by way of their representations in film and television, so too are our own projects by way of our drawings and of them. Plans, site plans, sections and perspectives are not only documentations and descriptions of a set of domestic spaces and programs, but also of imagined worlds into which our houses might be cast.