The Entire Situation, presented by Erin Besler, explores the architectural mock-up, as a conceptual counterpoint to the idea of an original, a non-authentic that is not trying to be an original. Holding a place in architectural practice as a particular type of model, mock-ups are executed at one-to-one scale with “actual” building materials. Though the name would suggest otherwise, the mock-up is constructed to be of utmost veracity, staged as a site to test ideas, to compare, verify and refute physical fact. It could be said that it is a copy that precedes its original.

The project engages in a number of methods that destabilize the authority of the original and produce distance between objects and their mutual representations.

Erin Besler is an architect and a teaching fellow at UCLArchitecture.