FIRST OFFICE

ANDREW ATWOOD
ANNA NEIMARK

NiNe
essaYs
To Sasha
UN-WISE

passage

— Craig Dworkin
This pamphlet collects nine essays that represent the develop-
ment of our ideas over the last four years, since the inception of our
practice First Office. Three of the essays were written by Andrew;
three were written by Anna; and three were written in collaboration
with one another. Each text has been paired with a project. At times,
the essays connect intimately to their associated images, outlining
particular circumstances, details, and contents. At other times, the
essays do not directly correspond to a project and instead establish
a broader cultural ground for the work. There are also essays that
do not fit neatly in either of these categories. Conceived separately,
these texts present a more personal take on research that often
fed into the visual work of the office. To gather all these writings
and images in one place required removing them from their original
contexts. This process of abstraction presented to us a project in
itself, a close encounter with some past ideas, people, and events,
which produced a great distance between us and our work. We are
unsure at this moment whether this is a rite of passage or a dead
end. Perhaps First Office is dead, and maybe we have killed it. So
now might be a good time to thank our editors for all their generous
help and support throughout the writing process and for granting
us permission to reprint the essays in this pamphlet: Jonah Rowen
and Emmett Zeifman, who published “Rewriting Abstraction” and
“Zoopol” in Project 4 in 2015 and Project 1 in 2012, respectively; Log
editor Cynthia Davidson, managing editor Luke Studebaker, as well
as guest coeditors Dora Epstein-Jones and Bryony Roberts, who
invited us to contribute “Rendering Air” and “On White on White” to
Log 31: New Ancients in 2014; Emma Bloomfield and Joseph Clarke,
who included “How to Domesticate a Mountain” in Perspecta 46:
Error in 2013; Adrian Lahoud and Kata Gašpar from the Zagreb
Society of Architects, who selected “Abstraction Returns” for the
Think-Space Pamphlets in 2013; and Future Anterior editor Jorge
Otero-Pailos, along with guest coeditor Aron Vinegar, who printed
“The Infrastructural Monument” in their 2012 issue on Rethinking the
Monument. We would like to also thank the Graham Foundation and
in particular, Sarah Herda and Ellen Alderman, for generously work-
ing with us on this compilation of essays and projects, and of course,
our friend and ringmaster, Jimenez Lai.
1 Rewriting Abstraction 13
Andrew Atwood

2 Installation Model 25
Anna Neimark

3 Preface 35
Andrew Atwood

4 Rendering Air 41
Andrew Atwood

5 On White on White 51
Anna Neimark

6 To Domesticate a Mountain 61
Andrew Atwood and Anna Neimark

7 Infrastructural Monument 71
Anna Neimark

8 Zoopol 79
Andrew Atwood and Anna Neimark

9 Abstraction Returns 87
Andrew Atwood and Anna Neimark
 Andrew Atwood
1 Rewriting Abstraction
Andrew Atwood 1
Andrew Atwood

A Letter to Morgan Fisher from an Essay by Morgan Fisher from an

Excerpt of a Letter by Morgan Fisher to John G. Hanhardt.2

As we discussed, I’m interested in rewriting your essay, or rethink-

ing it in terms apart from the way that abstraction has recently been
explained, and hence, I would suggest, perceived in a drastically
limited way. I do not think it’s necessary to do this; it has just finally
occurred to me that thinking in this way is possible. It disappoints
me that abstraction is going down in history as a closed chapter, as
if there were no more to be said, as if recent articles were the final
word. I hope we can agree that this is far from so.
Others may read this, so it’s important to state from the outset:
this essay is not a corrective to your original. It is not meant as a
misreading or as a misreading of a misreading or as a swerve or
as a critique or any of those things. I simply admire your essay and

Andrew Atwood
Michael Osman with Morgan Fisher’s Writings open to the “Abstraction” essay, p. 85.
I like the idea of operating on a referent with which my essay can
First Office

be compared. I like having a composition and structure that were

authored by someone other than me. I like the distance and the diffi-
culty it provides. Perhaps this is why I am trying to put us in the same
space, so that I might provide a comparison between apparently
similar things.
But, more importantly, I chose to rewrite your letter because I
have also been thinking a lot about abstraction. This is what drew
me to your work. It occurs to me that abstraction is what my work
is often about. In your terms, abstraction is my work’s “impossible
ambition.” I realize it’s odd to selectively quote one phrase in this
essay—which itself is one extended quote—but I find that particular
phrase to be an extremely precise way of saying what I‘m getting at.
It seems to me that the problem of abstraction in contempo-
rary architecture is quite different from the issue of abstraction in
modern art, in ways that have never been specified. The question
for me is how we can continue to produce abstraction as a means of
producing architecture. Like you, I admire Frank Stella, Ad Reinhardt,
and other abstract painters, and as you pointed out, the power of
painting relies on the fact that we can see everything at once. A

12 13
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First Office

Shotgun House. Plan with eight rooms and ten Duchamp doors.

Andrew Atwood
15
 Duchamp Doors. Trim turns the corner. 45-degree axonometric drawing.

Transverse walls misalignment. 90-degree axonometric drawing.

Andrew Atwood
First Office

painting’s facts are immediately present. Its image and materiality whose integrity allows it to remain abstract, architecture must attain
exist in a single frame, on one surface. Abstraction in painting is abstraction despite the differences and distances between its vari-
made possible by the coincidence of these observable facts. For a ous products.
painting to be abstract, our perception of it must oscillate between The drawing, which has historically been the location of
looking at the painting as an object, and seeing the image that the abstraction in architecture, is only part of what architecture is. It’s
painting is trying to portray. If the image represents something too that simple. Architecture always extends beyond the confines of
faithfully we will never see the painting as a thing. If the process of this frame. And because drawings are projected, they are always
creating the painting is too visible, we will never see the image. We displaced, whether it’s from one drawing to the next, or to an image
must always see the thing and the image at the same time. Or, as you or rendering or model or building. These projections are rehearsed
pointed out, it must continue to oscillate: thing, image, thing, image, an infinite amount of times in architecture. Model to Drawing
thing. . . . to Model to Rendering to Animation to Model to Photograph to
The problem in architecture is different. Despite recent Building to Drawing. . . . You always only ever see part, and what you
attempts, we have never been able to see everything all at once. see is only ever a projection of some other part.
Unlike painting, architecture has no medium. There is not a specific This is why architects who index the process of drawing in their
conduit through which to understand architecture. It doesn’t exist in buildings are ultimately unsuccessful. They model their work on
a single frame, as a single thing. Its representation, image, and phys- the language of abstract painting, but they ignore the fact that what
icality are never compressed into one object immediately consum- painting affords is what architecture can never allow—the ability
able in a moment. These things are always different. Unlike painting, to see all of the work of architecture: not just the full extent of the

16 17
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First Office

2
2

12
’-6
”
3

12
’-6
”
4

1
12
’-6
”
12
’-6
”

2
Original wood framing is preserved, restored, and left exposed on the inte-
rior of the house. New roof framing is added in the front and the back of the
house equally to provide for two front porches: (1) Original Structure; Shotgun House is gutted and divided into four equal parts, each measuring
(2) New Structure. roughly 12’-6” x 15’: (1) Workshop; (2) Bedroom; (3) Kitchen; (4) Gallery.
1

1
2
2

3
2

4
2
1

Every room is configured with an electrical conduit circuit for maximum flex-
ibility. No outlet is more than six feet away; and new outlets can be added
as necessary. The location of conduit is specific to each room: (1) Workshop
outlets along floor and 42” above finish floor; (2) Bedroom outlets along
floor; (3) Kitchen outlets 42” above finish floor; (4) Gallery outlets along
ceiling; (5) Breaker Box splits electrical system into four circuits.
At every wall intersection, two doors operate four door frames. When the
bedroom is closed, for example, the workshop opens into the gallery. The
double door configuration is also expressed on the façade to allow residents
and guests to enter freely. (1) Exterior Doors; (2) Interior Doors.

Andrew Atwood
19
 building, but also the work’s representations, which are the docu-
ments of the work’s own making. Unlike paintings, which are things
bound in a space, of a specific size, with edges of a finite width,
architecture is never bound in this way. Yes, a building has a site,
but our perception of it has no neat boundaries. Not only is the work
experientially fragmented, but all the other media, which prevision,
envision, and revision the building, are assembled to surround archi-
tecture. The work’s limits can never be understood by the boundaries
of its material substrate, and neither are they confirmed by its being
a discrete singular object.
What to do to overcome this fatal set of circumstances? Well,
one way to do it is to compulsively push into buildings the tech-
niques and specific qualities found in forms of representation we
use in architecture. One example would be to represent by means
of illusionistic images the supposed “facts” of a building’s experi-
ence projected onto the building itself: how the building is rendered,
how it’s traditionally constituted through representation as “real,”

Andrew Atwood
before it’s ever built. What is now automatically taken for granted in
First Office

painting, its dual status as an image and object, might be achieved

in architecture by making buildings that not only look like their
renderings, but are also produced like their renderings. The ambi-
tion of some of my most recent work is this kind of self-congruence,
bringing image (through rendering) and object together, to make
architecture that delays a stable reading as a single form of architec-
ture, whether it be in the form of a model or a rendering or a drawing
or a building or something else.
1. Morgan Fisher, “Abstraction,” Writings,
edited by Sabine Folie, Susanne Titz (Köln:
Walther König, 2013), p. 85-86.
Model of Duchamp doors in detail.

2. This essay is part of a letter I wrote to

Morgan Fisher on August 20, 2014, which
is based on an essay written by Morgan
Fisher, which was excerpted from an un-
published letter written by Morgan Fisher
to John Hanhardt on September 28, 2000,
and revised in 2012.

3. Hal Foster, “At MoMA,” London Review of

Books (Febuary 7, 2013), p 14-15 . . . among
others.

20 21
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First Office

Consolidated Urbanism.
Reprinted with the permission of Project,

Osman with Morgan Fisher’s Writings open to the “Abstraction” essay, p. 86.

Andrew Atwood
23
 Anna Neimark
2 Installation Model
POZZO: (To Lucky.) Coat! (Lucky puts down the bag, advances, gives
the coat, goes back to his place, takes up the bag.) Hold that! (Pozzo
holds out the whip, Lucky advances and, both his hands being occu-
pied, takes the whip in his mouth, then goes back to his place, Pozzo
begins to put on his coat, stops.) Coat! (Lucky puts down bag, basket
and stool, advances, helps Pozzo on with his coat, goes back to his
place and takes up bag, basket and stool.) Touch of autumn in the air
this evening. (Pozzo finishes buttoning his coat, stoops, inspects
himself, straightens up.) Whip!

Paranormal Panorama. Installation plan. Mackey Gallery, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, CA.
— Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles annually
invites an Austrian artist to collaborate with a Los Angeles architect
on the design of an installation in the Mackey Gallery. The role of
the artist is to place a work of art inside the gallery. The role of the

Anna Neimark
architect is to place a work of architecture inside the gallery. Both
First Office

actions seem at first similar and straightforward. But they are not.
Artists have had a long relationship with galleries and museums as
their patrons. These spaces for the display of art seem normalized
today, possibly in part because art has had a critical moment toward
its means of exhibition and consumption. Examples in the “expanded
field,”which located painting and sculpture outside of the white box
of the museum in land, data, performance, and pavilions, abound.1
Contrary to this long history of art’s display and struggle against
its containment, the history of architectural display is a short one.
Museums have for over two hundred years located architectural
artifacts—models, drawings, and fragments—but locating architec-
ture as such, and commissioning works of architecture within these
interiors, has emerged as a relatively recent trend.
With many museums and galleries offering such projects to
architects today, there is a wave of proposals that shrink architec-
tural problems to the format of the installation. Not too small to
be an exhibition of models and not too big to be a fully serviced
commission, the installation seems to offer a convenient form for
architects to express their ideas on a relatively small budget on the

24 25
26

Paranormal Panorama.
27
 one hand and outside of the constraints of practice on the other. And
although this new model of curatorial patronage often offers the only
outlet for public display for an office that has not yet established a
traditional client base, there are many problems that arise from its
format that push the architect into a peripheral field.
Sylvia Lavin offers a similar critique in her recent discussion
of a parallel architectural type: the pavilion. She argues that if art’s
pavilion was a form of resistance against established norms of the
consumption of art, architecture’s pavilion seems to be its opposite:
its form facilitates the consumption of architecture, cheapens its
role as a cultural vehicle, and eliminates the need for more commit-
ted forms of patronage. Her essay is a call to arms for architects to
not engage pavilion competitions, exhibitions, and biennials that
have exploded throughout the globe as a result of this easily pack-
aged architecture “at a steep discount.”2
First Office cannot yet afford to decline offers for installations,
pavilions, or whatever else you call these often temporary, low-bud-

Anna Neimark
get, high-labor projects. Besides, we are so inconsequential, that our
First Office

resistance, if we pursued it, would go entirely unnoticed. We recog-

Panoramic interior elevation renderings with paint, conduit, molding, and vents.
nize, however, that if architecture were to remain a critical practice,
we necessarily would have to resist occupying such spaces neatly
or comfortably. While our participation in installations makes us
complicit in promoting its miniaturizing format, we nonetheless hope
to express its capacity as a conceptual device through the forms that
the work necessarily assembles—representational, professional,
and contractual.
So when we were approached by the Austrian filmmaker
Constanze Ruhm and the director of the MAK Center for Art and
Architecture Kimberli Meyer to place a work of architecture inside
the Mackey Gallery, we immediately accepted the invitation. We
did so under the caveat that it will be a self-conscious and critical
piece, uncomfortable in its own skin, without a beginning or end,
barely distinct from its gallery context. The mundane limitations of
practice, often left behind by the installation, would definitely need
to be considered. After all, if the production of the work defines its
medium, then perhaps the instruments of architectural practice are
the specific tools that define ours. To reject the established formula

28 29
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Anna Neimark
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First Office

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paint damaged during installation or other 5 Apply water-based paints only when the painting. Remove these items if necessary Second Coat: Sherwin-Williams Extra
construction); temperature of surfaces to be painted and to complete painting of nearby surfaces. White Interior Flat.

30 31
 New wall with mountain panorama, molding, and conduit.
First Office
of placing an object—architecture—inside of an envelope—the
gallery—the Mackey project developed its formal language through
the professional paperwork and labor practices of the gallery’s
normal functions.
Conventionally, gallery walls are painted white. In fact, they
seem to be defined by this generic, unquestioned finish. Painting
walls does not demand an architect’s involvement. The choice of
paint—its hue, sheen, and brand—is often left to chance: something
matte, something environmentally safe, something of which the
nearest store never runs out. If an architect were to get involved in
this process, the paint and the painting would have to be specified.
Those choices would be documented in the specifications, as a set
of instructions to the painter. To design that aspect of the installa-
tion, we realized that we would have to write a “spec book.”
In school, nobody writes spec books. Nobody reads them. No
one assigns them. They are not deliverables for any final review.
They are not considered interesting. And maybe they really aren’t.
Historically, specifications have been used to translate an abstract
32
Old wall with mountain panorama, molding and conduit.
Anna Neimark
design into instructions for the building trades—reading often like
Samuel Beckett’s stage instructions. The spec book is still used to
communicate between these professions, and in the process it iden-
tifies them as separate, distinguishing the domain of design from
the domain of building. In truth, we cross this line all the time, but we
wanted to identify that boundary as a contribution to the critique of
the architectural installation: to identify the work we do as archi-
tects and to differentiate it from other kinds of labor. We used speci-
fications to keep ourselves honest to our goal of doing architectural
work instead of doing an architectural installation; perhaps it was a
kind of rehearsal of an architectural service, not the real thing.
1. Rosalind Krauss, “Sculpture in the Ex-
panded Field,” October 8 (Spring 1979).
2. Sylvia Lavin, “Vanishing Point: The Con-
temporary Pavilion,” Artforum (October
2012), p. 219.
33
 Andrew Atwood
3 Preface
What you are about to read should be obvious, but a prefatorial
statement is necessary. An installation without a prefatorial
statement is not an installation, right? Also, a written statement is
technically required here, in this place (see Terms of the SCI-Arc
Exhibitor’s Agreement). Worse still, without one, this becomes a
sort-of installation, an installation without the proper authorization,
an alien without the proper papers. In fact, only when it’s prefaced
is it worthy of bearing that name: installation. Maybe this is because
the authority of the installation statement relieves me of the neces-
sity to fully describe to you the work that I’ve done. A statement, in
other words, leaves open the possibility that your participation is a
definitive characteristic of the installed work. Like I said, maybe this

Mezzanine plan.
is obvious.
Regardless, I hope we can agree that a prefatorial statement
is a convention within the genre of architectural installations. And

Andrew Atwood
so, here is mine. I do not know if this installation will be of any real
First Office

interest to you. It took a rather pleasing turn in its realization. Its

content is fairly entertaining. Its forms are fairly fantastic. Its details

. . . And Pedestals Installation. SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA. Gallery plan.

are fairly natural. The odd mixture of references gives conventional
things (lights, paint, carpet, etc.) an almost exceptional air. All
of this makes me hopeful that it meets the minimal conditions of
being interesting. But beginning with my own impressions may be
the wrong way to start my installation statement. Beginning with
my conclusions, however, satisfies a core requirement for any such
statement: it shows that I wrote it after the whole thing was fully
thought out. As they say, “after all is said and done.” It puts the
installation on solid ground, as it were, but it disappointingly falls
short of making a statement about statements. Maybe I can blame
that particular shortcoming on the fact that not many texts exist on
the architectural installation statement. Maybe this is the first one,
or a preface to the first one. Many texts exist on installations in art,
of course. And artists have plenty of texts written about the prefato-
rial statement; there are numerous texts written about titles, even.
But art installations also find their footing in other disciplines, often
referencing statements from the history of literature. To find a proper

34 35
 8 3/4
18
precedent for architectural installation statements, we might just as
well look to the literary preface.
A preface is an odd thing. Published first, written last. A pref-
36°

36
°

ace functions as a necessity, whose own necessity is immediately

°
71

34

41
defeated by the work that follows. My title states this is a preface,

70

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but by writing the word with a strikethrough, it also indicates that

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70
ALL EXPOSED PLYWOOD IS TO BE SANDED
SMOOTH, PRIMED AND FINISHED WITH 15/32" CDX PLYWOOD "EGG

17
PAINT AS SPECIFIED. CRATE" FRAME. SEGMENTS

the text you are reading is erasing the purpose of the title which
JOINED WITH SPECIFIED
PIECES.
1 LA. 1/8" BENDABLE LAUAN PLYWOOD.
FASTENED AND SECURED TO PLYWOOD FRAME.
SEAMING PER LAYOUT. PATCH AND SAND ALL

71
°
SURFACES TO SMOOTH. NO VISIBLE SEAMS.

17
preceded it. But I rather like how it calls a word into question that we
°
36

37°

assumed we understood, but whose meaning we are now no longer

#17. sure about. A preface, like a title, reasserts its authority only to be

#9.
continually defeated by the thing that follows. This has led to the
presumption that the preface should not be taken seriously, that the
real work is what comes after. But sometimes the peripheral work
18

8 3/4

33 3/4 43 46 1/4 21
36°
is all that exists, if only by accident. Perhaps these reflexive acts
CENTER OF CONE
36
°

of erasure and reduction are at the center of this project, if that’s

11

possible. Let’s consider the possibility of solely producing these

21

°

R36
71
34

41

R72
47 7/16

Andrew Atwood
36 7/16

3/4
57

peripheral things that we might never have confronted in any other

70
60 3/4

36Â
First Office

10
50 3/4

°
54 90 29
10
36

36
31

36 13 1/2 11 1/2
10
18 18 1 LA. 1/8" BENDABLE LAUAN
PLYWOOD. FASTENED AND
SECURED TO PLYWOOD FRAME.

context but a blank installation. An installation with presence but no

SEAMING PER LAYOUT. PATCH 62 1/16
AND SAND ALL SURFACES TO
SMOOTH. NO VISIBLE SEAMS.
26 9/16 6 1/8 6 1/8 6 1/8

ALL EXPOSED PLYWOOD IS TO

3/4

BE SANDED SMOOTH, PRIMED R72

AND FINISHED WITH PAINT AS R36
6 1/8 6 6 SPECIFIED.
36

10 10 10
50 3/4

15/32" CDX PLYWOOD "EGG CRATE" FRAME.

content.
6 SEGMENTS JOINED WITH SPECIFIED PIECES.
3/1
60 3/4

58
°

29
36Â
70

ALL EXPOSED PLYWOOD IS TO BE SANDED

SMOOTH, PRIMED AND FINISHED WITH
PAINT AS SPECIFIED.
6

15/32" CDX PLYWOOD "EGG

36 13/1
17

CRATE" FRAME. SEGMENTS

47 5/8

JOINED WITH SPECIFIED 1 LA. 1/8" BENDABLE LAUAN PLYWOOD.

PIECES. FASTENED AND SECURED TO PLYWOOD FRAME.
SEAMING PER LAYOUT. PATCH AND SAND ALL

The preface sits on this periphery. Like so many other conven-

SURFACES TO SMOOTH. NO VISIBLE SEAMS.
71
21 1/4

°
17
11

°
36

tions, it serves as the threshold between an installed work and

33 3/4 43 46 1/4 21

37°

its constituents, much like the project credits, the title wall, the
brochure, the poster, the rendered image, the bio, the headshot, the
#16.

#4.

opening, the gallery talk. If, like the preface, these things are often
18
defeated by the work, what should we make of these customs? Are
they simply a series of disciplinary habits left over from previous
8 3/4

33 3/4 43 46 1/4 21
36°

36
°
generations? Or worse yet, have we borrowed them from other
disciplines to obscure the fact that we don’t have any conventions
CENTER OF CONE
11

C10
21

°

R36
71

C1
C2
34

of our own? This installation is mostly about working through these

41

R72
47 7/16

B1
36 7/16

B2
C9
B3 3/4
57
18 Ways to Draw a Pedestal, #1.
70

B10
60 3/4

36Â

A1 A2
10
°
50 3/4

A10
54 A3 90 29
10

peripherals to question the status of a genre’s conventions. After all,

C3
36

36
31

36 13 1/2 11 1/2
10
C8 B4
18 18 1 LA. 1/8" BENDABLE LAUAN
B9 PLYWOOD. FASTENED AND
A9 A4
SECURED TO PLYWOOD FRAME. 62 1/16
SEAMING PER LAYOUT. PATCH
AND SAND ALL SURFACES TO
SMOOTH. NO VISIBLE SEAMS. 26 9/16 6 1/8 6 1/8 6 1/8

what would an installation be without floors and lights and walls and
ALL EXPOSED PLYWOOD IS TO
A8 A5
3/4

BE SANDED SMOOTH, PRIMED

B8 AND FINISHED WITH PAINT AS
C7 6 1/8 6 6 SPECIFIED.
36

B5
10 10 10
15/32" CDX PLYWOOD "EGG CRATE" FRAME.
50 3/4

A6 C4 6 SEGMENTS JOINED WITH SPECIFIED PIECES.

3/1 58
60 3/4

29
36Â

A7
ALL EXPOSED PLYWOOD IS TO BE SANDED
70

SMOOTH, PRIMED AND FINISHED WITH

paint and posters?

PAINT AS SPECIFIED.
B6
6
36 13/1

B7 15/32" CDX PLYWOOD "EGG

17

47 5/8

CRATE" FRAME. SEGMENTS 1 LA. 1/8" BENDABLE LAUAN PLYWOOD.

JOINED WITH SPECIFIED FASTENED AND SECURED TO PLYWOOD FRAME.
PIECES. SEAMING PER LAYOUT. PATCH AND SAND ALL
C5 SURFACES TO SMOOTH. NO VISIBLE SEAMS.
C6
71
21 1/4

°
17
11

33 3/4 43 46 1/4 21

37°
36
°

It should be obvious, but this installation isn’t an empty

container waiting to be filled, or an imposed absence in the wake of
withdrawal or in the name of sobriety. It’s about facing the strange
#12.

blankness of an installation about an installation’s liminal elements.

36 37
 It’s about those things that take up so much time and consume so
much of the budget. It’s about reading something when there is noth-
ing there to read. It likes to quibble. Or maybe it’s even more obvious.
Maybe, like the title (which we are no longer sure about) this instal-
lation is about the anxiety produced by blankness and the terrifying
struggle with the terrifying question, “Are you sure this is enough?”
Or is it too much?

Andrew Atwood
First Office

SCI-Arc Gallery. Interior elevations of . . . And Pedestals for construction.

Installation Opening. Photo: David Freeland.

38 39