Adaptive Misuse

A Real Estate Opportunity on Sunset Boulevard,
Los Angeles


2017

Ed Ruscha in his work “Every Building on the Sunset Strip”, depicts the typology of one of the most popular area in Los Angeles as a mundane, generic way. But the essence of his work represent the details of Sunset Boulevard to the viewer that one may not recognize on a daily life by isolating buildings (parts) from the Strip (whole). 

Ornamentation before the second half of the 20st century was a representation of social statue and class. Capitalism corrupted the idea of ornamentation by making it more reachable and common.

Therefore the “overused” became the least desirable and their iconic meanings have lost the old definition andshifted into pastiche.



In this project the pastiche ornaments from the Hollywood Vernacular are studied and reformed to become architectural space rather than embellishments.

By the technique of caricature the issue of scale comes into play. Augmentation of certain characters of the pre-existing facilitates the satire of the superfluous nature of the vernacular.

And by habiting these generally known to be superfluous parts of architecture into mass, this thesis will try to rethink the relationship of part to whole and modes of abstraction through the usage of scale, color and misuse.