Michelle Chang, the visiting Wortham Fellow at the Rice School of Architecture, designed a twisted half-house titled "A,B 1:2," and students got a chance to watch as she built the 16-foot-tall structure in RSA's jury room. The installation represents how successfully or unsuccesfully an artist's or architect's drawings translate into something physical.
“A lot of my work is based on optics and perspectives, how changing certain assumptions of our representational conventions can lead to new ways of seeing,” Chang said. “What’s interesting about doing these installations is they’re always so incredibly different from what I imagined them to be, working digitally.”
“Another way to talk about it is in how we describe boundaries in architecture,” Chang said. “We’re all familiar with boundaries that are related to architectural elements like a wall or a window. Or we can describe boundaries according to objects, like the chair versus the table and their relationship to the wall. But here, I’m trying to establish different ways of thinking about soft boundaries within an architectural installation.”
When the installation is broken down this week, the wood and drywall will be used for RSA's student projects. When her fellowship is over, Chang will stay on at RSA as an assistant professor of architecture, starting July 2017.
