BOVEDAS

TABLE LAMPS

Las Bóvedas (or ‘The Vaults’ in Spanish) are a collection of architecture models slash lighting fixtures slash creature toys based on classic vaults. They are meant to activate the imagination of children and adults alike, inspiring greater interest in architecture with accessible forms and materials.

The first set of protypes are milled in solid oak, with their design optimized for the tools at hand. Each one is handmade on not-perfectly-calibrated machinery, so it’s imperfect and one-of-a-kind. They are finished in child-safe oil and completed with lasercut acrylic eyes.

Solid red oak milled on a drill press and table saw, finished in natural food- and child-safe Tung Oil. They stand ~4” or ~8” wide, by ~4” deep, between 6” and 15” tall. Lasercut acrylic eyes with novelty LED light insert.

CALIFORNIA MISSION MODELS

Stucco scale models of landmarks of California Mission architecture, including the bell tower and front facade of the Mission San Diego de Alcala, the first in a string of monasteries built by the Catholic church to expand the footprint of the Spanish Empire northward from Baya California.

In elementary school, kids learn about how this advance of ‘civilization’ planted the roots for our largest cities. But, of course, this narrative glosses over the horrific oppression and attempted extermination of the local indigenous populations on whose backs the Missions were built. Similar to the Canadian Indian residential school system, missionaries led by Friar Junipero Serra and aided by colonial soldiers conscripted indigenous populations into the Mission communities in the name of assimilation, forcing them to work, fight, and die for the cause.

Based on my first prototype, these models will be composed of an undyed stucco coating over a rudimentary plywood substructure, a somewhat artificial stand-in for the original plaster over Adobe or other earthen blocks. This artifice mirrors the deceptively vaunted history of California Missions that we are taught in elementary school and connects to the ‘stucco-ification’ of this popular architectural style in its early twentieth century revival in California.

This rendered animation depicts a pair of models under threat from the wildfires burning outside. As we have discovered in California, fires propagate rapidly across landscapes that have been deprived of regular controlled burns, a long-running practice of local native populations that was stamped out by colonialism and industrialization. And what often burns are non-native invasive species of tropical and and other plants brought by foreign colonizers.

This prototype is available for pickup in LA. $1,750

SATURN CHANDELIER

STUDENT CATEGORY SHORTLIST, L A M P 2021 International Lighting Design Competition

YEAR: 2021

BRIEF: The Saturn Chandelier repurposes neon as a framework to compose curvilinear geometrical volumes, melding the cage and the enclosed lighting fixture into one contiguous networked ‘surface.’ Its form is inspired by the Onion Domes common in Eastern European and Russian orthodox church architecture and other traditions from all over the world.

This is a single-drop pendant chandelier featuring an array of NEON arms that bend towards the central axis of the fixture. They radiate outward from the central ‘Saturn’ BRASS armature and create a neon cage that is shown at approximately 16” in diameter and 43” tall.

COLISEO FURNITURE COLLECTION

BRIEF: These furnishings feature plywood cabinets suspended within an oak framework.

BURLWOOD FURNITURE COLLECTION

LOCATION: UCLA Extension INSTRUCTOR: Patrick Alt YEAR: 2013

BRIEF: This is a design for a suite of office furniture including a secretary desk, executive desk, and conference table. The geometric bronze frame supports burl-wood and maple veneered cabinets.