MANIFOLD design, Big Sky, Small Sky. Installation view at Palazzo Mora, 2016.

Big Sky / Small Sky
"A dialectic interaction of expansion and compression"
Architecture, specific to philosophic innate principles of ‘Time, Space & Existence,’ develops frameworks of environmental conditions, internal and external. ‘Cause and effect’ and the order of relatedness in space and spatial relationships and time have bearing on problems of the physical and philosophical.’ Harvey.
The following up of Rem Koolhaas’s interpretation of Elements of Architecture with a challenge call of Aravena is the architectural argument. ‘We must have basic necessities in order to work beyond levels of just survival and to attain a higher quality of life.’ The present curator wants the story, the ‘report to a general audience of what it is like to improve the quality of life while working on the margins, under tough circumstances, facing pressing challenges.' We have dual reports: Our practice is our challenge and our Work is beyond necessity.
Located in Baltimore, USA, MANIFOLD design engages daily in small urban efforts within the impossibilities of lack of funding, failing infrastructure, lack of education and urban desolation. The majority of our work involves archeological treatment of site and existing conditions. It involves procedural relationships between small Businesses, non-profit Organizations and city agencies and Regulation.
Despite these disadvantages, there is joy in the discovery and salvaging of prior constructions and concepts. Exposing and not wasting effort; we extract and promote underlying function and beauty. We add our own enhancement in limited display of material and tectonic interplay.
The Biennale participation is two-fold. The Work presented is recycled from other Works and is a lean construction that ship efficiently. Connections are modified from generic parts. It is also a positive construction and an investigative model. Aluminum is malleable; the dichroic film is alluring.
Regarding the Installation, its components, operating in systems, accommodate adjustments. The mechanics of physical sciences defines unifying fundamental principles and armature. While the Work is founded upon elements of architecture: form, geometry, color and unit configuration, the mechanical orchestration moves it closer to inherent aspects of dwelling within an ever-changing position of here, before and later.
The Work is a study of tensile and planar constructions within a methodical rigor of symmetrical operations. It implores elements that, while integral to construction, operate as additional indicators in space making. The Work, in whole, evokes a sense of place and environmental awareness.
The Work demonstrates an interpretation and heightened experience of two spatial scenarios. It is a finite tectonic model and an infinite ‘Gemini’ reflection. One work is suspended, one elevated.
Karen Lemmert and David Naill established MANIFOLD design as a collaborative practice engaged in the development of conceptual work within the physical landscape. We believe the dialog of material properties to systems of construction takes place within organized fields of energy that can be utilized by alignment of tectonic constructions with manifolds of distillations and dispersals.