FreelandBuck Creates "Down the Block," a New Lobby Artwork at Los Angeles’ Mark Ridley-Thomas Behavioral Health Center

Los Angeles, CA - Created by NYC- and LA-based architecture studio FreelandBuck, Down the Block is a new permanent, 86-foot-long artwork in the lobby of the recently renovated Mark Ridley-Thomas (MRT) Behavioral Health Center in Willowbrook, south of central Los Angeles. The installation, a commission of The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture's Civic Art Division, reflects on the multi-decade relationship between the health center and the local community as well as the building’s new behavioral health focus.

Formerly, the building was home to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital, a critical care facility for southern Los Angeles now reimagined as LA County’s first dedicated behavioral health center. It provides fully-integrated inpatient, outpatient, and supportive services for some of the city’s most vulnerable populations, such as those struggling with mental illness, substance use disorders, and homelessness.

In the process of creating a defining artwork for the center, FreelandBuck was inspired by the work of Silver Threads, a local quilting circle with a history of sewing hand-made quilts and donating them to patients at the health center. The quilts are emblematic of the warmth shown by the community toward MRT patients, as well as the healing therapies offered at the renovated facility. “We are thankful to Silver Threads for opening their door and welcoming us to learn about quilting,” says David Freeland, co-principal of FreelandBuck. “Not only do they make beautiful and inspirational quilts, their insights into the community became the figurative threads that we wove into Down the Block.”

Down the Block stitches together digital photographs of 21 houses from the local community, while approximating a traditional “broken dish” quilt block pattern (a particular layout of half-square triangle blocks). Suggesting that digital imagery is the fabric of contemporary culture, the resulting composite streetscapes construct a tentative set of residential typologies in the Willowbrook community while also revealing the differences and idiosyncrasies of the neighborhood’s architecture.

Willowbrook’s architectural landscape is composed primarily of modest, well-cared-for homes—a local point of pride. For Down the Block, FreelandBuck selected images of colorful houses with distinctive landscapes and architectural features that would produce a vibrant composite image. “Our initial survey of Willowbrook streetscapes revealed repeated rooflines and proportions which are quilted together,” says Brennan Buck, co-principal of FreelandBuck. “Across these repeated shapes, distinctive colors, siding, decorations, and landscapes emerge.”

The layered images that comprise the streetscapes are alternately distributed onto the surfaces of two lightboxes, one measuring 52 feet wide and the other 34 feet wide, with both measuring 8 feet high by 10 inches deep. It is constructed with an aluminum frame and skin with recessed LED lighting to create a luminous interior that is balanced with the light of the lobby. The back layer is printed on dibond panels, and the front layer on large, ship-lapped polycarbonate panels.

The artwork utilizes the repetitive geometry of the quilt pattern to produce a parallax effect, causing the image to visually vibrate as the viewer moves along the length of the installation. The repeated swatches on the front and back surfaces collapse into a single 2d pattern when viewed in elevation, but a glitch-like repetition emerges from an angle.

In this way, Down the Block’s glowing, patchwork images of local homes emanate through the lobby, reflecting the supportive and tight-knit relationship between the MRT Behavioral Health Center and the community that surrounds it. “Down the Block is situated in the main entry lobby to the health center where patients, doctors, nurses and staff walk by on a daily basis,” says Freeland. “Whether in passing or through closer inspection, our ambition was to create an artwork that was familiar and comfortable, an inclusive image of the community that all are a part of.”

About The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture Civic Art Program

The LA County Department of Arts and Culture's Civic Art Division (Civic Art) is proud to manage the creation of original, site-specific artwork, public engagement activities, exhibitions, and event-based programming at new and renovated facilities throughout LA County. Working with both leading and emerging artists, County departments, and community members, Civic Art provides leadership in the development of high-quality civic spaces by including artists at the earliest phases of the planning and design-build process to encourage more integrated approaches to the creation of public art, while providing residents with access to artistic experiences of the highest caliber.

For more information, please visit: https://www.lacountyarts.org/

Photography by Eric Staudenmaier

Project credits:

Team: Brennan Buck, David Freeland, Luiza De Souza

Fabricated and Installed by Hades Construction