Connections are interfaces between discretized materials, assemblies, spaces, and structures.  They are performative in as much as they actively facilitate transference of information, activity, and most often, energy amongst localities of a system.  Despite such virtuosity, they are often conceived as static problem-solving tools derived blindly from an architectonic problem with which they have no inherent relation; or they are considered the site of a sort of poetic first principle out of which structure, form, material, and space, all unfold in a supposed harmonious resolution.
 The fundamental problem with such conceptions is that they place the connection within a hierarchy; the connection is always subject of or subject to some other element or system of elements, be it formal, structural, or even logical.  Contemporary architecture requires a consideration of the connection that’s independent of such an impositional hierarchy.  
 Local Manifold considers the connection in terms of its identity as a self-referential system, a hive of localities which neither serve nor are served by another entity.  As an architectural project, it manifests connectivity as a condition that permeates a spatial field and is irreducible to formal heuristics or tectonic poetics.  In this way the role of the connection is to metastasize a plurality of field-defining elements into an architecture of utter autonomic poesy.

updated rendering

construction document

contruction site

Tree Space is an investigation of the ambiguous dialect between virtual and natural in art.  The installation itself figuratively looks like a tree, by virtue of the compositional logic of the elements that construct it.  It has branches that simulate growth and give it form, but they do not appear like a real tree.  They are designed.  Tree Space isn’t an object in a field like a tree per se, but one that creates it’s own spatial field: you can stand in it, sit in it, lay under it, walk within it, etc.  Tree Space will literally be an open and shady occupiable tree with a dense canopy of computer-generated and digitally fabricated branches.

Yong Ju Lee +Brian Brush

The Dynamic Performance of Nature is a solar-powered installation designed to sense the animate natural environment of the world and interactively communicate it to the visitors of the Leonardo through an intelligent, dynamic wall.  It’s inspired by the concept that sustainability for the 21st century should be crafted to evolve beyond conventional application of green techniques into something alive and integrated with the environment, conditioning the most sophisticated forms of creativity for the preservation of life.  This dynamic and interactive installation will invite curious inquisition as well as detached contemplation of the synthesis between light, material, space, and global environmental information.

Installation diagram

Plan

Section detail

Perspective

Assembly Diagram

Elevations

Processing animation samples for LED matrix (Thanks for Hayes Shair for his assistance.)

View from left

View from right

Winner of a commission for a permanent installation at The Leonardo, an art, science, and technology museum in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Yong Ju Lee + Brian Brush

Surface manipulation..

installation for courtyard

contrast by form and materiality

in progress…

Yong Ju Lee +Brian Brush

photographed by Yuan Tang

GSAPP 2009

Yong Ju Lee +Brian Brush +Leah Meisterlin

Spring 2009

GSAPP

http://www.leahmeisterlin.com/ornamental-connectivity

Yong Ju Lee +Brian Brush +Leah Meisterlin

Spring 2009

GSAPP

http://www.leahmeisterlin.com/ornamental-connectivity