THE DIPTYCH : (n., dip-tych, \’dip-(,)tik\)

1: a 2-leaved hinged tablet folding together to protect writing on its waxed surfaces

2: a picture or series of pictures (as an altarpiece) painted or carved on two hinged tablets

3: a work made up of two matching parts

In 1989, the New York Times ran the headline: “The Whitney Paradox: To Add Is To Subtract.” Such was Paul Goldberger’s take on the notion of adding to Marcel Breuer’s Whitney Museum, a “bold and severe” building whose “essential architectural idea is its own aloofness.” There was, as far as Goldberger was concerned, no good way to add to a building that so badly “wants to be alone” that separates itself from its neighboring buildings with a raw concrete wall; any attempt to do so would undermine those antisocial qualities that had made the building so notable in the first place.

When dealing with the problem of two parts in architecture it is often in terms of binary opposition - solid/void; figure/ground; old/new; different/same. Unlike the binary, the diptych does not strive to erase its other half. It also does not strive to simply double, replicate or mirror. It is more complex than the purity of absolute sameness or difference. It is complex and difficult combination of both at the same time.

In the project Distort, it consider consider the problem of architectural addition through the lens of the diptych. Using Michael Graves’ proposed additions to the Whitney Museum (1985-1988) as a reference, the project proposal for a single family home neighboring the LADG’s Armstrong Avenue Residence in Silver Lake. Next to the original LADG house, the new proposal constantly expresses the diptych through 45 and 90-degree projection throughout the whole project. It is the critic of the purity of absolute sameness or difference in architecture.