The tangential implies the expression of how two things touch, in a moment where polarities prevail. This brief project explores the tangential as a formal, rhetorical, and mathematical framework to interrogate the relation between part and whole, thick and thin, complex and contradictory. Two cones, one upward, the other downward, internalize the sloping of the topography and formalize an architecture that hinges alongside. An artist residency for two, this courtyard scheme embraces the unevenness and irregularity of the ground. By leveraging the developable geometry’s ability to unroll flat, the wooden shingles ascribe material order, texture, and scale on the weaving surfaces, turning from outside in at points of tangency. The result is an artifact that encompasses the formal, spatial, structural, and material effects of tangential explorations. Hinging on the canonical, comical, conical.