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From 1997 to 2002 my studio RMCD developed a visual identity and publications for the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design. The design solution stemmed from the preoccupations of chair Sylvia Lavin and those of late twentieth-century architectural theory and design, revolving around the issue of time and architecture. Lavin understood that her communications would express her vision for the department and we both pushed the industry standards to their limits to express ‘matter as time’.
We were both inspired by the words of architect Greg Lynn, professor at UCLA architecture, who writes in his book Animate Form : “…Instead of simulating flow and continuity through the addition of motion as in traditional cinematic techniques, animation suggests animalism, animism, evolution, growth, actuation, vitality and virtuality.â€?
[part 1]
From 1997 to 1999 the identity was fluid and heterogeneous, focusing on an exploration into ‘animate design,’ a design practice that falls in the inexact yet rigorous, whose intent is to ride in difference, subverting a traditional (modernist) identity system which rides in continuity. In this phase we explored using unstable materials—antistatic plastics, trash bags, melting typography onto poly bags, which added a variable that gave unexpected and uncontrollable results, yet brought the material to life.
[part 2]
From 2000 to 2002 the identity became out of necessity structured and homogeneous, because –after a few years of establishing an identity of change– we realized we could not afford it, as each piece became an unpredictable experiment, and we were also running into schedule madness. So we established the expected continuous system. Both Sylvia and I missed the explorations in form and material, and so did much of her audience, yet the new system was welcomed with comfort—the comfort of the predictable ‘print materials’. The work is rigorous in its graphic system, and the exploration of time in matter became photographic—shooting underwater so matter behaves differently, focusing on the shadow cast by the roses onto a ubiquitous white wall rather than on the roses themselves, etcetera.
