2023, Fall Quarter, 5 weeks, UCLA
PUFF is an addition to Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau that focuses on subject matter - the Camaleonda sofa by Italian architect and designer Mario Bellini. Bellini’s intent when designing the sofa was centered around pixelation, modularity, and the possibility for reconfiguration. I am attracted to the idea of a module that is endlessly repetitive, becoming an element in a system.
Systematic repetition relates very closely to how Corbusier operates when he designs, which is usually through modular grid systems. Adopting the existing grid allows for its use as a module component; an element that can be reconfigured and applied to the overall whole
In this way, PUFF enables the grid potential for modular expansion.
Programs: Rhino, Vray, Illustrator, Photoshop
The shape and aesthetics of the sculptural puffed panel system are derived from the form of the Camaleonda. Its function is to modulate light and to create an atmosphere that responds to the original subject matter.
The curves of Italian industrial design are analogous to those found in plan. There are no interior walls within PUFF. It is populated with modules of the Camaleonda for visitors to utilize as originally intended: to lounge on, move around, and reconfigure. The sofa becomes an object in a field and the room becomes a container for this one specific item. The experience of PUFF is not prescribed or choreographed.
Visitors are free to move in unique sequences and movement is not dramatized. Much like the content objects themselves, the experience of PUFF is user-determined. A double height space creates a vast, light-dappled exhibition gallery.
Grids are nothing without context and personality. Through color and geometry, the Camaleonda brings life to an organizational tool, produces effect, infuses space with its DNA, and functions as the modulator between building and industrial design. The geometries of the sofa and of the puffed panels impart both a visual and tactile experience of softness; the inflated grid.
PUFF is a 3D immersive void for the geometry and the feeling of the Camaleonda, dealing with the palpable qualities of light, surface, and softness. This new space is not the culmination of a journey through L’Esprit Nouveau; it is merely a singular moment in the experience.
