Offcut: A Museum in Los Angeles

Offcut A Museum in Los Angeles08 copy

by Morgan Starkey (MArch ’19), Alexandru Vilcu (MArch ’19)

Interrogating the role of the architectural detail, this project examines how these small elements may be a generator of larger architectural spaces and logics. “Active Inlay” studies that parametrically sweep motific molding profiles through a host volume, both carve out and organize space, while engendering an attitude about joints, fits, and connections that appear across scales in the museum. The same series of Boolean operations that result in a desirable edge-to-edge host/inlay relationships on the macro scale, are used at the sweeping nodes that resolve the intersections of the two constructions systems: a 2-way concrete coffer surface and a glulam timber assembly. Beyond these formal and technical elements, the project poses questions about leveraging the function, misbehavior, and perversion of ornament in architecture.