Henry Cobb + SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss to discuss Hypostyle experiment on April 2

Henry Cobb, a founding principal of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects, will be joining SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss to discuss the Hypostyle exhibition when it opens in the SCI-Arc Gallery on April 2 at 7 p.m.

Based on the hypostyles of ancient eras, Cobb's Hypostyle installation is a site-specific experiment that alters the hypostyle's traditionally columnar spatial experience with planar elements to shape new forms.

More details below.

"Since time immemorial, hypostyles have been constructed as halls wherein highly ordered arrays of vertical supports populate roofed spaces that are conceptually limitless—but to widely varying effect. The hypostyle in this SCI-Arc Gallery installation is an experiment. Far from being intended to demonstrate or test a general theory, its purpose is simply to discover the experiential consequence of populating a hypostyle not with columnar solids but with planar elements joined to form vertical constructs that shape figural spaces both within and between them."

"Each of the twenty constructs comprising the installation is composed of four 3-foot by 8-foot 1-3/4-inch thick hollow-core doors: three joined to form an H-shaped vertical that is then capped by a fourth roofing the space below. Rotation of the constructs in alternating rows sequentially in both directions introduces a larger-scale order, further enhancing a complex interplay that blurs the distinction between solid and void, open and closed.

"One construct in the center row is omitted to create a gathering space within an otherwise uninterrupted array. A hypostyle thus constituted is without precedent, and its effect on the occupant cannot be fully predicted by drawings: it must be experienced."

Find more details here.