The problem with figuration in contemporary design is not excess, but the erasure of actual and perceivable figures as a result. Can figuration be attained at the level of mass and volume without defaulting into fragmentation and collage? A possible expansion within this lineage implies conceiving figures as interstices, absolutely integral to architectonic order, embedded, materially articulated and intensely but locally distributed across the fabric of building.
Born in Argentina and both architect and educator, Marcelo Spina is the founder and co-principal of PATTERNS along with Georgina Huljich. PATTERNS is a design research architectural practice based in Los Angeles that has gained worldwide recognition for its inventive approach to design and architecture that fuses advanced computation with an extended understanding of form, tectonics and materials. Part of a so-called digital generation, what sets PATTERNS apart is not only its overt ambition to materialisation but the quality and extent of realised work. Recently completed projects includes FyF house in Argentina, Prism Contemporary Art Gallery in Los Angeles, a Chengdu Hybrid Office Building in China and Jujuy Redux Apartment in Argentina. Exhibited and published worldwide, PATTERNS first comprehensive book-monograph entitled Embedded is forthcoming by ACDCU. Since 2001, Spina has been a Design and Technology Faculty at SCI-Arc. In addition, he has taught at the universities of Harvard, Berkeley, Tulane, Washington and Innsbruck after holding a position in Argentina.