REASONING
This practice is what it needs to be, when it needs to be.
Here, design is not something you do, but something you use. The question is, for what does one use it, for who, and what+who do we have to make it happen. Ideally:
everything.
everyone.
all of it.
There is no singular interest here. Obsessions surface unknowingly and priorities shift as they need to, yet this flow aims to synthesize disparate parts that typically exist in tension - what we thought wouldn't fit, wasn't possible, wouldn't make sense, or what we weren't ready for.
Ell’s spatial practice, ELLprojects, is forged at the intersection of art, design, performance, and documentary, each operating to reappraise the purpose and range of our processes, lexicon, and design sensibilities. While priorities shift as needed, his work is heavily informed by the spatial dualities and incongruencies found between the spaces we co-opt and our daily performances.
Recent inquiries have delved into; reconstructions and imaginaries of the post-colonial home through memory, photograph, and perspectival drawing technique; the Society of Care And Maintenance: an organization and performance concerned with self-conditioning, environmental trauma, and the Oakland, CA streets; and ELLsf: a 5-year research initiative that prioritized the spatial and operational condition of art production via a co-opted commercial storefront space.
Ell has lectured nationally and has taught undergraduate and graduate advanced option studios at UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. His design studios have prioritized the immaterial and programmatic dimension of urban remodeling, the productive tensions between incompatible programs, and leveraging existing architectural tropes into new ways of living.
He holds a Master of Architecture from UC Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning.