VOTE FOR ME!!!
SuckerPUNCH is having a competition and my thesis project "Fuzzy Figures" was selected. Go here and click "vote" for me in the top left hand corner!
VOTE HERE:
http://www.suckerpunchdaily.com/2012/02/07/fuzzy-figures/#more-19133
THANKS!
Check out the work and final product from a three-semsters-long research and applied studies adventure with instructor, applied studies guru, and friend Tom Wiscombe. The project was a generously funded design and research exploration of fiber composite structures and fabrication taken on by four Graduate Thesis Students including myself.
Special Thanks to all those involved, especially my three buddies Paul Mecomber, Mike Gross, and Vince Pocsik. Also, Adreas Froech of "Machineous" for his help with fabrication including Henry Dominguez and Tom Bernard.
More abiout the class, the research, and the project here at Tom's website:
http://www.tomwiscombe.com/project_05.html
Machineous' website:
http://www.machineous.com/index.html
These are the first of 9 foam molds milled and sanded at SCIARC before shipment to our fibercomposite fabricator "Machineous" in Culver City. The completed 30' x 15' installation will be up at SCIARC this coming August cantilevering out front of the SCIARC cafe inside the school in the North Gallery space.
3 Semester Long Graduate Level Material Research and Fabrication Seminar focusing on Digital Design / Structural Performance / Digital Fabrication / Fiber-composite Construction"The Cantilever" SCIARC
Dave Bantz / Cat Pham
SCIARC: Spring 2011 Vertical Studio
Vertical Studio - Spring 2011
Professor - Lise Anne Couture
TA - Michael Young
Rather than taking the “true” or literal approach to materials, this
project attempts to adopt techniques mastered by artists and apply
them at an architectural scale. Material in art is used as a
representational device for effects and a gateway to sensation. The
"Artificial Matters" studio, run by SCIARC professor Elena Manferdini,
aims to provoke new sensations through texture, geometry, coloration,
and finish. The studio began by 3D scanning literal materials (in
this case a sliced peach) and modifying the raw data to produce a
synthetic material with the potential to create new sensations. The
project footnotes artists such as Murakami for his use of distortion
through an object in the landscape, while the attempt here is to
implement distortion and blurring of context and figuration. The
conceptual pavilion proposal for the Milan 2015 Expo takes massing,
which has traditionally been absolute and legible, and makes it
simultaneously illusory and viscerally evocative. This is where fact
and fiction coexist. The exterior causes a distortion and blurring of
reality through refraction and density, blurring the figure. While the
indexical cut reveals the interior materiality of the pavilion and is
concerned with more visceral and immediate sublime sensations.
By Dave Bantz / Michael Gross
Instructor: Elena Manferdini
SCIARC Fall 2010
SCIARC Spring 2010
M. Arch II - 2GBX Studio
Instructor: Elena Manferdini
These are the boards from my latest Studio Project completed during the Spring semester 2010. The project is design for a Fashion Museum in Tokyo, Japan. Guided by studio instructors Elena Manferdini, Marcelo Spina, and Tom Wiscombe, our studio was thrown into an intensive month long scripting workshop. After said workshop, we were encouraged to extrapolate and build from our venerable bank of scripting experiments adding consideration for program, context, and performance. A crisp, patterned, and prism-like exterior shell encases a sinuous structural and circulation network, which inturn supports more focused plastic interior volumes. These interior volumes acts as incubators for various exhibition displays and archived exhibits. The liminal spaces between shell and plastic volume are more open plan showroom-style spaces, often open to above, in a more atrium like condition. The corner condition and extremely small footprint of the site were limiting factors, and forced the project's verticality. The guised and patterned transparent exterior shell provides glimpses into the interior, and the luminescent quality of the mass projects interest out towards the bustling street of Omotesando. Passers by should feel teased, curiosities heightened by partial or distorted exposure of the exhibition galleries and couture runways. The Museum is not only meant to archive the past fashion exploits of the 20th Century, but to be a beacon and a catalyst for the many satellite fashion houses in the famous Shibuya-Ku fashion district.
This is a new building in Little Italy in San Diego. A documentary about a new way to build sustainable cities by architect/developer Jonathan Segal FAIA that was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art La Jolla. I've always kept my eye on Segal because I like his simple approach to design. At SCIARC we struggle for a new way to design and labor over projects the strive for innovative performance and form, but Segal is from a different school of thought entirely. He's found a way to create decent architecture and make some money at the same time. The show was called Mix 9 and the film on Segal was created by Breadtruck Films.
Link to some of the film on VIMEO: http://vimeo.com/5371552
Dave Bantz is an architectural designer from La Jolla, California and currently resides in Silverlake, Los Angeles. Among many architectural projects, he has participated in exhibition designs for both the Venice Biennale 2009, with Ball + Nogues Studio, and the Invitational SCI-Arc Gallery Series, with Hodgetts + Fung. Bantz received his Bachelors of Environmental Design (B.EnvD) from The University of Colorado - Boulder, where he was selected for a year of architectural study in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is an avid designer, reader, surfer, and musician. After a three and a half years with Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture, Bantz returned to school for a Masters from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Downtown Los Angeles. After a short stint at the office of Tom Wiscombe (Emergent Architecture) during the Summer of 2010, he graduated with honors. He is now a designer for an international design firm in Downtown Los Angeles.
