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Jason Payne replicates curled Raspberry Fields roof system for SCI-Arc exhibition
Los Angeles-based architect Jason Payne is recognised for his highly inventive and exploratory forms, classically showcased in 2010 project Raspberry Fields, a textured residential build in northern Utah. In this modest scheme, Payne – and his boutique architectural practice Hirsuta – encased the building in shingles which have curled drastically over the years in response to the freeze-thaw nature of the local climate.
This abundance of twisted wooden shingles has been perfectly replicated in part for an exhibition at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Payne and Hirsuta have recreated the roof of Raspberry Fields at 1:1 scale which will form the centerpiece of the gallery exhibition Rawhide until 11th September 2011.
An exploration into the relationship between a building’s ‘skin’ and an animal’s ‘hide’ forms the basis of this display piece, the mass of curling shingles presented as an architectural representation of a beast’s pelt. This theme has been continued into the surrounding space, where real cowhides grace the room ‘refigured as abstract bodies’.
In order to achieve the desired look and feel of the roof – a weathered coiling of the wooden protrusions which would take years in a natural environment – Payne steam-curled the coat of cedar shingles, encouraging it to ‘take on the quality of an animal hide par excellence, moving architectural cladding toward something more wild and feral…the becoming animal of architecture’.
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