Knitting a 'Screenplay' for Dwell on Design

The annual Dwell on Design show always features plenty of modern design favorites for the Dwell audience—a redesigned AirStream, affordable prefab, futuristic bathroom-ware. You’ll also see a custom-designed installation called Screenplay that will greet you at the entrance. The creation by the firm Oyler Wu is a very unusual “wall” or “screen” plus a seating area and it exemplifies a trend among some LA architects—finding a way with material and craft to realize a highly complex pattern or shape created in the computer. Screenplay is a passion project, involving a team of willing collaborators working for weeks to hand-loom this object in a backyard in Silver Lake. Oyler Wu principal Jenny Wu speaks about the project against a backdrop of enormous sunflowers, a bulging lemon tree, and the sounds of songbirds and roadworks, as five people are busy, unfurling silvery rope and winding it into complex knots and layers around a metal frame.

Screenplay is just the latest example of installations by some LA architects who are creating striking effect through this kind of blend of tomorrow’s and yesterday’s skills. Is there an irony in reverting to traditional crafts to realize virtual concepts? You can find another example of this kind of experimentation at Pasadena Museum of California Art, in an installation by the firm Layer. That is all part of a two-week bonanza of design events under the umbrella of the Los Angeles Design Festival. To find out more about the Los Angeles Design Festival and Dwell On Design, check out our list of highlighted events and installations.