Maxi Spina: Thick

“Objects become processes and forms are objects in motion.”
–Agnes Denes

SCI-Arc Gallery presents Thick, an exhibition of new work by Maxi Spina of Spinagu.

Thick is a research project that explores material thickness as a site of architectural investigation. Alluded to in section, camouflaged in the figure-ground, and presented as a foil in the developed surface drawing, material thickness is an understudied architectural condition that has served as an elusive site for many acts of design. 

As a term, thickness does not refer to the actual solidity of a material (as in the standardization of sheet material or thickness of marble), but a conceptual and material problem that sits (literally) at the edge of architectural thinking. The condition of thickness—the necessity of thickness—carries no central import in any era of architectural thinking, but manages to circulate through different modes of architectural production. Its condition is linked to (but is not central to) the history of stereotomy and stone construction; in the emergence of new forms of architectural drawing (developed surface drawing); and in the classic problem of the Doric order. Even in the modernist obfuscation of solid form, it remains an unavoidable consideration in the Miesian corner and Kiesler’s endless surfaces. 

In digital software, thickness is infinitely thin. Its default property is a single line or algorithmic curve. Its “thickness” must be added—it appears as an offset, an extrusion, an enclosed surface—as a mere afterthought. Thickness is a constructive problem as much as it is a representational one. In construction, it’s become synonymous with material offset (due to the predominance of sheet material), as opposite to stereotomy, in which thickness is derived from subtraction and removal of mass. Thickness becomes a tectonic default rather than a techne to be designed.

Thick attempts to expand on the problems of material thickness through the topic of sections, ruins, fragments, constructions, figurations, simultaneity, and representation. Presented through drawings, objects, and installation, the work is conceived as a series of “objects in motion” which seek evidence in the strong interaction between the representational and the material. The exhibition is spatial—operating within/between/through the literal walls of the gallery—as well as processual, producing architectural fragments that explore the section as an operative act, through which figuration and form emerge. 

About Maxi Spina
Maxi Spina (b. Rosario, Argentina) is the co-founder of Spinagu. He is currently Design Faculty and Applied Studies Faculty at SCI-Arc. He was previously the Maybeck Fellow at UC Berkeley, Lecturer at CCA and Associate Professor at Woodbury. His work has been featured in exhibitions at A+D Museum, Jai & Jai, Wuho Gallery. He received his M.Arch from Princeton University and a B.Arch from National University of Rosario, Argentina. 

About Spinagu
Spinagu is a practice dedicated to architecture and design, formed of Jia Gu and Maxi Spina. We produce traditional architectural objects, such as displays, houses, and towers, alongside non-traditional projects, such as chess sets, exhibitions, and text. We are interested in architecture as a conceptual medium through which to explore technology, history, materiality, and form.