Crop Top
BairBalliet
Plaza Cofradía del Vino Rioja
2025
Crop Top is a series of partial rooms that encourage visitors to circulate in the round to continually crop their views of each other and the surrounding square. Composed of a circular roof and a set of vertical surfaces that range in widths from walls to columns, the project spatializes the literal technique of cropping as an act of framing views both around and above, between and through. Crop tops serve to both ration and highlight material. Conflating notions of visual framing with construction framing, it is fabricated using a partial framing system, where sheets (and their offcuts), rather than dimensional lumber, minimize material use for maximum effect. With its incomplete roof cladding, Crop Top is a nod to the trending (again) crop top shirt, a garment that uses subtraction to focus attention on the missing middle.
BairBalliet
BairBalliet is a design studio based in Chicago and Los Angeles, founded by Kelly Bair and Kristy Balliet. Kelly Bair is Partner and Associate Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture. Kristy Balliet is Partner and Design Faculty Chair at SCI-Arc. The studio explores architecture through speculative and built projects, merging conceptual, experiential, and technical aspects. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale and MoMA New York.
With the support of
