Hasta La Ideas

Images and Reporting by Carren Jao

Casual passerbys stop in their tracks, fascinated by the shingles that curl without care in SCI-Arc’s current exhibition of Jason Payne/Hirsuta: Rawhide – The New Shingle Style.

A partial reproduction of a planned Utah renovation, Jason Payne, principal at Hirsuta and SCI-Arc alum, attempts to “pervert” the shingle-style architecture, or rather, swerve it.

Payne intentionally attached 1/2″ thick shingles “improperly” on only one side of a residential project. Each shingle was unfixed at the bottom with the grain oriented horizontally rather than vertically to encourage “curling.” On the other side of the residence, everything was attached according to conventional wisdom. The result is a house literally with two faces. One, wild and feral; the other, staid and reliable. In short, a contemporary twist on a classic architectural style.

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