Alluded to in section, camouflaged in the figure-ground, and presented as a foil in the developable surface drawing, material thickness is an understudied architectural condition that has served as an elusive site for many acts of design. Thick is a research project that explores material thickness as a site of an architectural investigation, which seeks evidence in the strong interaction between the representational and the material. The project culminates with a two-month exhibition in the SCI-Arc gallery space, featuring new work by Maxi Spina. The exhibition is spatial—operating within/between/through the literal walls of the gallery—as well as operational, producing a collection of fragments that explore the section as an operative act, through which figuration and form emerge. Together with a workshops series, catalogue, and public discussion, the exhibition will expand on the problems of material thickness through the topic of sections, ruins, fragments, constructions, figurations, simultaneity, and representation.

Maxi Spina is a graduate of the National University of Rosario (BArch with honors) and Princeton University (MArch). He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley (where he earned a Maybeck Fellowship), California College of the Arts, Woodbury University, and National University of Rosario, before joining SCI-Arc, where he teaches both design studios and applied studies. In 2014, he founded Spinagu Studio with Jia Gu; prior to that, in 2007, he founded Maxi Spina Architecture. Spina's work foregrounds the realm of the drawing as a space conceptually and aesthetically responsible for both the formal and material constitution of the architectural object and the sensory world it creates. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including those from the Chicago Athenaeum, the AIA-Los Angeles, Architect Magazine, and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. He was a finalist for the Architizer A+ Awards and the recipient of three Maxine Frankel Awards for Research. His work has been exhibited in Wurster Gallery in Berkeley, the A+D Museum, WUHO, and Jai & Jai in Los Angeles, and he has previously worked for Neil Denari Architects and Studio Daniel Libeskind.