R.06
DESKTOP

Type:
Exhibition

Role:
Design, Fabrication, Curation

Location:
Keller gallery, M.I.T.

Date:
Fall 2021

With:
Joel Austin Cunningham, James Vincent Brice

With thanks to:
The Generous support of the MIT Department of Architecture, Nicholas De Monchaux, Aidan Flyn, Chris Dewart, Eytan Levi, Ben Hoyle


DESKTOP aims to materialize the diverse experiences of MIT Architecture during the remote 2020-2021 academic year.  The collective work surface of the exhibition makes a space to explore the artifacts of our isolation, the stories behind the products and processes of making at a distance. The finished and the unfinished, the prototype and the cast-off,  the footnote and the shopping list, the things we made and the things we used to make them -- Desktop offers a reflection on the material histories of the department’s year apart while celebrating its re-opening: our coming together.

The exhibit was conceptualised as a rolling archive, a collective work surface. We released an open call to the student body, with the aim of recieving one piece of material from each student. The exhibition furnishings were fabricated in a few short days after the submissions had been recieved, in order to meet the quantity of submissions.  In the tradition of the ‘MIT hack’, I designed a folded metal desk lamp which was to be cut out of the shelf material of an inexpensive rolling cart. Two pieces of plexiglass stabilised the shelf after this operation, creating a silhoutted figure on the desktop. At the end of the exhibit, the carts were knocked down, disperesd into the studios, and quickly re-metabolised into the work-flow of the department.



01. installation


02. installation

03. installation

04. installation


05. lamp detail

06. installation detail


07. postcards


01. cut plan
02. plan



03. elevation

04. isometric