Purple Rain

Rosalio Arellanes, Tim Paulson & Ryan Whitacre

Purple Rain modulates smoothness and depth by manipulating the linework of folds and edges. With these two classifications of lines, the project exhibits a range of smoothness across the field of the wall as the lines of the panels bend, crease or break apart. By creating apertures at the breaking points, depth increases as the sub-layers and panel components become partially revealed. At the same time, the thinness of the aluminum is celebrated by exposing the edges universally as crisp, hard lines. Through a process of tesselation, which inherently seeks to achieve complexity through the repetition of identical units, this proposal seeks to generate cohesive at-large variation through a randomized distribution of two cell types A & B. This distribution attempts to erase the boundary of the cell within a field of continuous surface. Color is applied to enable optical variation across the field. The muted finish of the aluminum panels, which absorbs abstracted atmospheric information, recedes while the hotly-colored wall behind seeps out of the openings. With a process of a micro surface texture (orbital sanding), a finer scale of detail produces secondary textural effects within the field of panels when observed at point-blank range. Intermittent discontinuities between panels generate figured apertures that dilate differentially to produce a slanted directionality or flow across the field.