Lossy/Lossless was a temporary environment for a neighborhood on the cusp of change. The project was designed for Materials & Applications, a cultural organization dedicated to expanding the role of architecture and art in the public sphere. At the time, M&A acquired a space on Sunset Boulevard in a rapidly gentrifying part of Echo Park. This project sought to provide a forum for discussing M&A’s potential role in the neighborhood’s development.

Designed as an occupiable diorama, the space featured a custom-made tableau that wrapped the walls depicting asynchronous elements of Sunset Boulevard’s past and future—markers of the Boulevard’s history and signifiers of gentrification. Assembled at multiple scales to collide time and space, the tableau elements were printed on a reflective wall covering. As one looked through the storefront, the streetlife was reflected amidst the tableau elements, blurring inside and outside to make the space feel like an extension of the street, and figuring the onlooker into a condensed image of the Boulevard. Filling the remainder of the space was a floorscape assembled from a data-center floor system. The system could accommodate various activities, from community meetings to after-school hangouts, all gathered as part of the changing neighborhood image.