David Freeland: Objective Perspective

David Freeland is a principal of FreelandBuck in Los Angeles. Established in 2010, the office makes buildings, spaces, and objects that open multiple modes of engagement through layers of meaning, illusion and visual effect. FreelandBuck was named a finalist for the 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architect's Program, a member of Architectural Record's 2017 Design Vanguard, and a winner of the 2017 AIA LA Next LA Award for their project, Second House. Other recent projects include Parallax Gap, an installation for the Smithsonian's American Art Museum and the Los Angeles headquarters of Hungry Man Productions, among other residential, commercial, and cultural commissions. David is design faculty at SCI-Arc since 2012 and has taught at Woodbury University, UCLA, and USC. He has several forthcoming writings that examine contemporary forms of drawing in architecture.

In 2015 David and his partner Brennan moderated a panel titled “Architecture’s Complexity Complex” at the ACSA conference The Expanding Periphery and The Migrating Center. Looking back to recent history, the panel considered the ambition of the complexity project, digital or otherwise, to push the limits of the discipline; in terms of formal virtuosity, environment, systems, etc. In what became a post mortem on digital formalism, the panel considered new practices working at the limits of the discipline that had moved beyond complexity in favor of issues such as figuration, contingency, and the status of the object. It questioned whether theories of complexity and systems that underwrote the formal excess of the 00’s had reached their end point. Since that time the status of drawing in our office, a central preoccupation and motivation, has flipped from indexical to something less determinate and more engaging. This talk, as self-reflexive as the panel, will consider complexity as a continuing project in architecture and our practice through discussion of several recent projects.