Primitive Black Side Table by ArandaLasch

ArandaLasch is a New York and Tucson-based architectural studio dedicated to experimental research and innovative building. Established in 2003 by Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch, the studio designs buildings, installations and objects through a deep investigation of materials and structure. Their early architectural projects are the subject of the book, Pamphlet Architecture #27: Tooling. ArandaLasch has exhibited their work internationally in galleries and institutions dealing with design and architecture. In 2008, they were commissioned by the MoMA in New York to produce a large-scale installation in the museum. They collaborated with Matthew Ritchie on The Morning Line on a work commissioned by TBA-21 that has travelled to Venice, Seville, Istanbul and Vienna. In addition to commercial and residential projects in New York, they completed a 42,000 square foot temporary structure for Design Miami in 2008 & 2009. ArandaLasch were featured in both recent 2008 and 2010 Venice Architecture Biennials.

“Their work—from the 2003 Brooklyn Pigeon Project to their recent Pamphlet Architecture publication Tooling—is characterized by both rigor and whimsy. Like scientists, they are committed to an exhaustive investigation of structures and systems that will enable them to discover new variations in form and surface that they can transform into architecture.” – 2007 United States Artists Fellows description of ArandaLasch. Recognition includes the United States Artists Award, Young Architects Award, Design Vanguard Award, AD Innovators, and the Architectural League Emerging Voices Award. Their work is part of the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York. ArandaLasch continually develops experimental furniture products that explore new concepts in fabrication and assembly.

Primitives is an installation that combines the romantic tradition of ruined landscapes with modular fractals. First realized across the entry of the Venice Biennale in 2010, it is comprised of loosely dispersed furniture elements that appear like rock piles, each one unique but formed from the same universal building block. Like microcosms in the distance, the clusters are imagined as islands falling apart and building back up, organizing and eroding at once.

The Primitive arrangements can be sat on, leaned against, held in your arms. The space is used to hold a series of conversations during the Biennale organized by arts organization TBA-21. It is more of a cave than an auditorium. The informality implicit in an ordering system is more important than expressing its strict composure. Multiple pursuits come together here—the quasicrystal, the fractal, the single building element, the landscape object—to make something atomized, frayed and open.