SPARK - Phoenix, Arizona
Multifamily Housing + Community Building + Adaptive Reuse
A live/work and showcase space for artists to combat the effects of gentrification and the covid-19 pandemic.
— Rumi
“The wound is where the light gets in.”
Kintsugi:
The art of repairing broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer. Celebrates an object’s unique history rather than hiding it.
The historic Phoenix Merchandise Mart building shows its history on its skin, just like people do.
It is ideally located in downtown Phoenix, across the street from Talking Stick Arena. This high-profile corner is at the border of the historically artistic warehouse district and the entertainment overlay - an ideal combination of living and visibility for the artists’ work.
We’re all going to come out of this pandemic with some sort of trauma, some scar. But scars are our history; they are proof of healing.
What if we celebrated scars of all kinds rather than hiding them?
Sherd + Glass Assemblies
In order to see how real objects break, you have to break some things. I started by imitating kintsugi, but I quickly became interested in the shapes of individual sherds and how they interacted as forms. I explored the ideas of light and broken edges with assemblies of irregular opaque sherds and translucent rectilinear glass.

SPARK























