Kissing Surfaces and Blank Canvases: Transformative Interplays in Los Angeles’s Ordinary Architecture

Warehouses and strip malls in Los Angeles carry qualities that are integral to the rich culture of the city. Their exterior and interior materials produce an inherent banality that creates potential for incrementality and reuse: a reuse of surfaces to create a new impermanent space that meets the needs of the city’s subcultures. Independent music venues, art galleries, and other experiential spaces find a place within the “ordinary,” providing an alternate reading through codifying the original surfaces of the buildings with light projections and ephemera. Through a series of various representation techniques, a new interpretation of these seemingly banal buildings is produced, examining the necessity of adaptability within design