BairBalliet: No More Room

BairBalliet, Kelly Bair + Kristy Balliet

Architecture has always been incomplete. Reliant on and completed by multiple subjects, perceptions, and associations, it is time to expand what is integral to architecture. No More Room leverages the contemporary relationship between the rooms we inhabit and the images we consume to produce a sense of being in multiple spaces at once, a type of quantum superposition in architectural terms. It is a layered construction of volumetric relationships centered around a designed core sample. Geologic in nature, it represents a partial architecture embedded with information from many points of origin and melds their traits to find completeness in the round. It asks backgrounds and middle grounds to foreground spatial experiences. No More Room makes room for architecture as the territory between things.

Cultural production pivots during unstable moments, often utilizing fragments to reflect the fragility of our environment. However, No More Room prefers an architecture of the incomplete to an excessive reconstruction of parts. Leveraging our aptitude for habitual cropping, framing, and construction of one’s world that merges our physical thresholds and virtual realms, a core sample is employed as both a process and product. Core sampling produces an inherent outside from insides, making it both an interior volume and exterior mass. A designed core is a projective act that renders walls obsolete as it reveals unforeseen relationships between rooms. Formal negotiation is favored over extrusion and challenges the notion that the core is a vertical connection between floors or a geometric center between rooms. No More Room represents a collection of spatial intensities at the intersection.

In the gallery, the project aims at the perception of fullness over filling. There are minimal material objects: one core and three blue screen walls that expand and contract the space of the gallery. The core is both an object and a backdrop. As an object its base sits unsteady on the ground, reaching up to reveal its roofline to the building exterior. As a backdrop, it leverages muteness, allowing overlays of various associations. Blue screen walls, devices normally used to project a limitless and immersive environment are misused. Here, edges are exposed, highlighting the potential zone between one world and the next. As an alternative to full immersion, surfaces meant to be invisible in order to complete a scene, instead are objects that redact and replace visual content. The exhibition is a partial construction and a finished stage designed for viewing in multiple states. A split screen aesthetic broadcasts the physical side in the form of live feed surveillance and its virtual side through animated content. The show is episodic as it unpacks the many ways we encounter rooms.

*This exhibition is viewable in the SCI-Arc Gallery by appointment only. Contact public_programs@sciarc.edu to make your appointment.

No More Room Credits

• Kristy Balliet & Kelly Bair
• Project Assistant: Irvin Shaifa
• Team: Malvin Bunata, Melody Chu, Burak Celik, Victoria Hatsenko, Hans Steffes, Ceema Sheikha, Sahar Simforoosh, Gerry Tao
• Foam Fabrication: Advanced Foam
• Metal Fabrication: Nick Rodrigues
• Videography: Jesse Corcoran, Dakota Rayfield, Jackson Rayfield
  

SCI-Arc

• Director: Hernán Díaz Alonso
• Communications: Stephanie Atlan, Sally Glass, Shelley Holcomb
• Graphic / Web Design: Marija Radisavljevic, Jacob Witt
• Audio/Visual: Curime Batliner, Reza Monahan, Phil Logan
• Facilities: Ramon Calderon, Gabriel Hernandez, Emil Tatevosian
• Shop: Rodney Rojas, Nicholas Humber, Brandon Youndt
• Security: Reginald Benson

Special Thanks

Lise Bornstein, Burdg Dunhm Construction, John Enright, The Freeland’s, Dan Johnson / Stuc-O-Flex International, John McMorrough, Lauren Mitchell, Patrick Stinger, Tucker Van Leuwen-Hall, Lourenco Vaz Pinto, Chad Villella

Additional Support by UIC and AWA+F.