A Cast of Things

source:theladgcom
Decorative images and ornamentation festoon the niches and alcoves of Bavarian rococo churches. Termed “micromegalithic” by the German art historian Hans Sedlmayr, these dense arrangements of paintings and sculpture imply towns or even entire worlds teeming with familiar objects and characters – their outer surfaces visible to the naked eye, but their deeper reaches and folds are impossible to discern, implying yet more extraordinary and fantastical architecture just outside of our immediate purview.

A Cast of Things by the Los Angeles Design Group (The LADG), is a series of models and drawings that investigate the agglomerations of decorative stucco at an existing rococo church in Osterhofen, Germany. Through various models and drawings of the church’s adornments, the LADG attempts to reveal the architectural possibilities beneath the surface, expanding the surface decoration into proposals for occupiable space.

At Bulthaup Chicago, the LADG presents three models, built like totems from 3D prints and stock materials from building supply catalogs (acrylic tubes, nylon blocks, brass fittings, wood blocks), and four drawings printed on aluminum panels. A large-scale model investigating the same rococo church is concurrently on view at the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Team: Andrew Holder, Claus Benjamin Freyinger, Evan Orf, Jeff Burgess, Madelyn Willey, William Adams

“A Cast of Things (bulthaup)” was presented by THIS X THAT and bulthaup Chicago. Photos courtesy of Brian Griffin.
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source:theladgcom
“A Cast of Things” is a model of a church in Osterhofen, Germany. The model shows the only upper part of the church, where the vaulted ceilings above the congregation are covered in frescoes that depict a heavenly city filled with people and life, as though entire habitable worlds are stacked atop the real space of the interior below. At one edge, it is cut in half to show the line where the real material of the vaults meets the fantastical space depicted in painting. Along the other edge, the outer walls and barn-like shed roof of church form a loose, unadorned enclosure that belies the form of the interior.

The real vaults of the church are modeled in cast plaster. It is solid and homogeneous. The worlds of the frescos above are cast too, but cast out of a promiscuous aggregate. Imagine a bucketful of things poured into a mold, as though clouds, bodies, drapery, and foliage were used instead of liquid. Pliant, soft things settle into corners and receive the imprint of the container, while others, more rigid, come to rest implacably, altered only insofar as they have tumbled into place.

And now imagine this aggregate is not so passive as to be simply “poured” into position without resistance. It has a structure, even an infrastructure: networks of pipes and tubes provide clear passage through the congestion; figures cluster and ascend heavenward in plumes of fat and drapery; caves filled with piles of raw material – like untapped veins of ore – give way to deeper recesses.
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source:chicagoarchitecturebiennialorg
A Cast of Things by the Los Angeles Design Group (The LADG), is a series of models and drawings that investigate the agglomerations of decorative stucco at an existing rococo church in Osterhofen, Germany. Through various models and drawings of the church’s adornments, the LADG attempts to reveal the architectural possibilities beneath the surface, expanding the surface decoration into proposals for occupiable space. At bulthaup Chicago, the LADG presents three models, built like totems from 3D prints and stock materials from building supply catalogs (acrylic tubes, nylon blocks, brass fittings, wood blocks), and four drawings printed on aluminum panels. A large-scale model investigating the same rococo church is concurrently on view at the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
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source:http:theladgcom
The Office
Established in 2004, The Los Angeles Design Group (The LADG) is led by principals Claus Benjamin Freyinger and Andrew Holder, with offices in Venice, CA and Cambridge, MA. The founders see their work as contributing to a longer history of ideas, and draw on this history to craft unexpected solutions to conventional problems in architecture and design. The firm works at all scales, with completed projects in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and the United Kingdom. Recent work includes a free-standing indoor-outdoor restaurant in Southern California and the installation of a contemporary picturesque garden in Loeb Library at the Harvard Graduate School of design. The firm has received numerous professional honors and recognitions, including 2017 and 2018 Progressive Architecture Awards, the 2014 League Prize from the Architectural League of New York, and multiple citations from the Los Angeles Chapter of the AIA.

Ben
Claus Benjamin Freyinger is co-Principal and co-founder of The LADG. Benjamin is a Guest Lecturer at the University of California Los Angeles, Department of Architecture and Urban Design. His design interests include the repurposing of architecture of the late baroque for contemporary audiences, and building relationships between architecture and fine art practice. Prior to co-founding The LADG Benjamin held positions at Mones and Partner, Architects in Munich, Germany, and Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects and Planners in New York. He holds a BA in art history from Boston College with a minor in fine arts from the Ludwig Maximilian’s University in Munich, Germany. Benjamin received his M. Arch from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2005. Prior to working in the field of architecture he gained fine art curatorial experience working for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy.

Andrew
Andrew Holder is co-Principal of the The LADG and an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His research and design interests include the late baroque architecture of 18th century Germany, the English picturesque, and the construction of architecture as an inanimate subject. Andrew’s recent work has been published in Young Architects 16, A plus T, Log, Pidgin, Project, and RM 1000. He is a frequent lecturer and guest critic at institutions across the United States and has held teaching appointments at the University of Michigan, the University of Queensland, the University of California, Los Angeles, Sci-Arc, and Otis College of Art and design. Andrew is a Harry S. Truman Scholar, an Oberdick Fellow at the University of Michigan, and a Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Fellow at Lewis & Clark College. He received a Master of Architecture with distinction from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Lewis & Clark College.