Architect Tobias Klauser’s installation at the Mackey Apartments was a study on private space turned public in suburban conditions, and a personal homage to Schindler. Inspired by garage sales and yard sales, a phenomenon unknown in his native Switzerland, Klauser duplicated the built-in furniture of his apartment, creating 1:1 free-standing versions made from foam core, tape, and paint. Though made from disposable materials, the objects were surprisingly sturdy and realistic. The items were sold over the course of the exhibition, each day at a deeper discount, thereby functioning as a yard sale.

Artist Stephan Lugbauer presented a multi-layered performance and video project that transformed the Mackey Apartments from merely the setting for events into the main character. In the first part of this project, The Grand Mackey Apartment House Guided Tour, two actors accompanied by a cameraman and sound engineer played tour guides and ran tours every 15 minutes, “explaining” the building and its history. In A Giant Flashback, a casting director sat in the office space and auditioned real Los Angeles actors. The audition was for the Mackey movie, with multiple scripts that intermixed material taken from biographies of former scholars/residents, as well as the recollections of popular TV-series/movies, artist talks and books. 

Inspired by Schindler’s designs for low-cost, recession-proof building, architect Edmund Min Yip Kwong developed a lightweight, low-cost bent plywood framing system for use in the construction of portable temporary spaces. His frame design could be assembled in 24 hours and disassembled in 12 hours and used common materials that could be quickly and economically put together by a craftsperson of average ability. Since the creative potential of this material is still largely unexplored, Kwong demonstrated a progression of research interests and fabrication strategies that link wood construction with parametric thinking. His installation presented a variety of uses for bent plywood and demonstrated its easy portability through projections, samples and large-scale models. Additionally, he proposed a full-scale version of an iteration of the project for Materials and Applications, a local project space.

Artist Marusa Sagadin’s Everybody says Hi to Hans because Hans says Hi to everybody was an extension of her fascination with the growth of American cities. For this project, Sagadin focused on the Sign Spinner, a person who is usually found standing along thoroughfares, using juggling, acrobatics and breakdancing to draw attention to advertising signs. Sagadin hired a sign spinner and ordered three signs from a local company. In contrast to common ads, her signs advertised opinions about urban space, economy and life style. With simple, rhyming sentences, Sagadin’s signs mimicked the slang often heard in the lyrics of pop, rap and rock music. A video of the sign spinners was installed amongst other objects and drawings in the exhibition.