ABOUT
Nina Briggs is the founding principal of THE FABRIC in Pasadena, California, cultivating new and renovation residential projects since 1987. Ms. Briggs received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California, and has taught architecture, interior architecture and landscape architecture at Cal Poly Pomona, California State University Northridge, The University of California Los Angeles Extension ARCID, The Art Institute of Los Angeles, Woodbury University, and College of the Canyons. Her collaborative approach to designing spaces for people, holistically incorporates sensitive listening and informed observation of human behavior within the layers of their cultural operating systems. THE FABRIC seeks to elevate and redefine place-making to positively affect inhabitants psychologically, while solving spatial problems. We strive to translate clients’ desires and spatial needs into architectural authenticity.
RESEARCH
Interdisciplinary analysis of architecture and interior design in the contexts of contemporary culture: In drawing from anthropology, psychology and human geography, and thinking beyond the traditional boundaries of architecture, we build an understanding of the interrelation of cognitive dynamics, and their effect on the inhabitants of interior spaces. Through ethnographic research, via cognitive and human behavioral mapping by means of time-lapse photography, we observe and analyze the psychological responses to space, producing empirical data and theories, generating hypotheses that inform design more effectively and sensitively. Design is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, and we explore how these shifts in paradigms transform design pedagogy and practice. Approaching design through the filters of culture, human behavior and materiality, THE FABRIC’S work swings towards the sensorial, narrative and experimental phenomena of space. This work extends to materials analysis, considering material characteristics, costs, uses, and effects on human health. We employ an instrumental methodology for space formation, questioning the notion of surface manipulation as an oppositional tool for the design of space, reminding us of the power of materiality to invoke affect. This analysis informs design value, articulating meaning & activating sensory responses; integrating, rather than applying the selection of materials as a didactic tool, early in the design process; and marrying design intention with material quality, holistically. With the generation of new materials, newly discovered uses for existing materials, and the transformative necessity of environmentally sensitive materials going from “green” to mainstream, THE FABRIC can chart a material’s life-cycle-process, seeking to preserve the economic wellbeing of our community, and reduce repercussions on the environment via buying local whenever possible.
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PRACTITIONERS
In an immersive 360-degree narrative, women in, around, adjacent to and outside of architecture tell their personal stories as they have never been told on film. The film features perspectives from nearly 70 interview subjects who reveal their quiet, game-changing works, illustrating their undeniable roles as the glue of the Los Angeles design community, the architects of our culture. The architecture community is more diverse, effective and nuanced than perceived. Architects are reclaiming some social capital by expanding their toolkits. They are crossing disciplinary boundaries, taking alternative approaches, and recalibrating their agency. Architecturally trained women have ALWAYS created their own relevance, by inclination and by necessity. The proposed film: “PRACTITIONERS”, unpacks the dimensions of women’s multi-disciplinary stories in the context of the greater design community and architecture culture. In their own words, they candidly describe their uniquely personal navigations through the profession in all its diversities.