Wall Flowers by Elena Manferdini Atelier
“Wall Flowers” responds to the fundamental uncertainty the digital age calls forth by presenting an image of nature that is at once recognizable and alien. Each element of the scene is digitally 3D modeled and animated with an ordering script. The flora appears familiar and at the same time eerily synthetic. The arrangement of the image recalls the sense of order in nature but taken to an extreme, because of the computational origin of the composition.
Geometrical orders and their affinity to aesthetic experience are enduring themes in art and architecture. Why are we drawn to geometrical rules? Why do we find them pleasing? Why do we reproduce them? According to cultural theorist and art historian E.H. Gombrich, this tendency to seek order is seated in our universal human impulse to find predictable rhythms in space and time. In his celebrated tour of ornament from 1979 entitled “A Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art” Gombrich makes a case that all decorative arts are the expression of an innate “sense of order”; since the beginning of time, ordering logics have assisted human existence in adjusting to complex, not to mention dangerous, external triggers.
We, as humans, like what we can control. Therefore, the harmony of parts constitutes a way of being psychologically affected, of being moved emotionally.
About Elena Manferdini:
Elena Manferdini is an Italian architect and educator. Her design office Atelier Manferdini is based in Los Angeles CA. Elena currently teaches at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and is the Graduate Programs Chair. She has held the Howard Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of California Berkeley (UCB), and visiting Professor positions at Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania and Seika University. In 2013 she was selected as recipient for the Educator of the Year presidential award given by the AIA Los Angeles.
In 2019 Manferdini was honored with the ICON Award as part of the LA Design Festival, which is a prize that recognizes iconic women who have made an indelible mark on Los Angeles, culture, and society in general through their work, character, and creative leadership.
With a body of work that spans art, architecture, and industrial design, her eponymous atelier has created work on over three continents that uplift the human spirit. Elena Manferdini loves art, creativity and inventions, she deeply believes in the positive power of education and creative collaborations.
