Upcoming exhibition at Warehouse gallery to explore concept of ‘infrathin’ in architecture

Upcoming exhibition at Warehouse gallery to explore concept of ‘infrathin’ in architectureMarch 09, 2006Mary Kate O’Brienmcobrien@syr.edu

Syracuse University’s School of Architecture will present “infrathin,” an exhibition of work by Jeffery L. Day and E.B. Min, March 20 through April 14 in the school’s new gallery at The Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette Street. Located on the first floor, the gallery is free and open to the public Monday-Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. A public opening will take place March 20. Paid public parking is available on West Fayette Street, one block from the building.

In architecture and landscape, infrathin concerns not only the first mark on the land — the line — but also the thinness that separates artifact and site, the frame from the view, the surface from depth, and the distance between one moment and the next. This exhibition considers infrathinness in recent and current work of Min|Day, Min and Day’s multi-disciplinary design practice.

The ordering principles of architecture, despite pretensions to universality are akin to a work like Marcel Duchamp’s “Standard Stoppages.” These are a parody of standardization or a comment on the impossibility of the precise repetition of an event or application of a principle. The difference created in new architectures is infrathin. Refusing to define the term, Duchamp offers examples of infrathin: the thickness of a shadow, the difference between two objects cast in the same mold.

Founded in 2000 by Min and Day, Min|Day maintains studios in San Francisco and in Omaha, Neb. The firms’s work reflects a flexible, tactical approach that deals with immediate circumstances and in particular those concerned with notions of site and program and landscapes both urban and rural.

The San Francisco-based Min holds a bachelor’s degree in art history and studio art from Brown University and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches architecture studios part time.

Day is based in Omaha and is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He earned a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in visual and environmental studies at Harvard College and a Master of Architecture degree at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to Min|Day, he runs an allied practice, Fabrication And Construction Team (FACT) at the University of Nebraska. FACT is an academic/professional collaborative design lab that offers students a forum for exploration aimed at expanding the understanding of the complex relationships between thinking (conceiving, designing, theorizing) and making.