Artist talk: Friday, January 30, 6:30 pm

Founded by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima in 1992, Tokyo-based architecture studio Atelier Bow-Wow explores the use and function of space within urban environments. Bow-Wow developed the term “pet architecture”—a style of small, ad hoc, multifunctional structures that make the most of limited space. Using the framework of art galleries or museums to experiment with form and behavior, Bow-Wow’s newly commissioned project for REDCAT is the culmination of an extended Los Angeles residency period, during which Tsukamoto and Kaijima researched the Case Study House program and made this postwar project a point of departure in thinking about domestic dwellings. Informed by the principles of the program—which enlisted architects to design low-cost homes for the masses with prefabricated materials—as well as the urban dynamics of contemporary Los Angeles, Bow-Wow’s Small Case Study House responds to contemporary models for housing in L.A. as they relate to concepts of customization, re-use, and “architectural behaviorology.” This is Atelier Bow-Wow’s first solo exhibition in the United States