Authenticity: First Office, League Prize Interview

“For more on First Office and the other 2015 League Prize winners, visit archleague.org/LP15 Anna Neimark and Andrew Atwood of First Office explore new ways of thinking about architectural production while still being “honest or forthright about ... our sources and references,” among them twentieth-century artists like Marcel Duchamp, Kazimir Malevich, and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Their Authenticity installation is composed of three tabletop models: a ready-made double-door, from plans by Duchamp; a one-room house; and a film screening room in Los Angeles. Each representation doubles as a miniature of a built or under-construction First Office project and an examination of the architectural model as an art object. Of particular interest is the model as a scaled reality, with details that “are both ornamental and formal,” down to the tiny outlet covers in the one-room house. Accompanying each model is a video that shows how, “if you could touch the model, … you would move around it.”