SUTURELINE
demo
Medium: Installation
Footprint: 13′ × 32′ × 7′ (HxLxW) overall envelope
Material base: 33 found wood doors; discrete metal feet/fasteners; removable anchors
Site Demo: Cut Studio, University of Nebraska–Lincoln (HDR Lobby)
Core idea: A continuous horizontal incision at eye level aligns across a field of doors. The incision is left open, absence becomes evidence. The join between parts is not hidden; the suture is legible as a design choice.
credits
Concept & Original Workshop Idea — Ella Rawlings, Kara Morgia
Project Direction and Execution — Camila Mancilla
Photography — Charis Franks
Camera — Noor Alsudani
Films and Interviews — Katelyn Allen
Inventory — Jordan McLaughlin
Technical Drawings — Thinh Nguyen
Diagrams & Axon — Natalie Fritchie
Writing & Editorial — Taylor Yakel
Assembly Lead — Sammy Solano
Structure & Joints — Jackson Riha
Fabrication — Lauren Hinrichs, Adyan Almothafar
Inspection & Punch — Stephanie Cabarcas
Sourcing & Logistics — Ella Rawlings
RESCUE → INVENTORY → PREPARATION → DATUM → INCISION → SUTURE → INSTALLATION.
Discarded doors are approached as an urban archive, objects carrying traces of use, repair, climate, and time. Each leaf is measured, drafted, numbered, and classified by type, dimension, and condition to establish provenance and guide assembly.
Preparation follows. Glazing and hardware are removed for safe handling; fragile members are stabilized; edges are conditioned for cutting. A single horizon at 5′-2″ (62 in) is established across the set. Along this datum, a continuous horizontal incision is executed with guided tools and finished to a safe touch. The eye-level void reveals laminations, scars, and prior interventions; absence functions as readable information.
Reconnection is intentionally legible. Steel feet plumb the units, salvaged door hinges link adjacent modules, and slim aluminum/acrylic alignment keys bridge the cut to maintain the shared horizon. Fasteners are exposed, tolerances are controlled, and clear walking paths meet egress and stability requirements. The system is modular and site-adaptable, allowing disassembly, transport, and re-installation.
“The act of making an incision often carries a kind of disloyalty, not unpleasant.”
—Georges Blin, in Bachelard,
La terre et les rêveries de la volonté. AIGB
This design-research frames the cut as a Janusian instrument: one face reads the past in matter (spolia, wear, repair); the other projects futures through recomposition.
A datum at eye level turns disparate fragments into a single sentence; the incision produces a legible band of absence; the suture keeps the join public, converting damage into grammar. In this register, doors function as thresholds in both senses—spatial passages and editorial marks—so that representation becomes literacy: audiences learn to read structure, time, and use directly from the opened section. The work converses with Serlian montage and Matta-Clark’s building cuts while answering contemporary mandates of reuse and pedagogy: edit, align, and bind without erasure.
