California City: Urban Composites of the Productivity Landscape

Fall 2019
Instructors: Nataly Gattegno and Hugh Hynes

The landscape of California’s inland region is characterized by dispersed settlements formed for the extraction, management, and exploitation of material and energy resources, a productive terrain amplified by technology. Dotted with obsolete remnants of industrial detritus and the abandoned company towns that once fueled them, these composite systems of urbanism and productivity exhibit a range of dormancy, activity, and latent potential. At the same time, technological innovations and shifting patterns of productivity/consumption suggest pathways to the re-population of California’s desert interior. This studio exploited those pathways, and developed versions of the new “company towns” that may result.   

California City studio, fall 2019: James Ayling, Aljune Drequito, Dina Elattar, Jessica Grinaker, Chiang-An Huang, Mithila Jagtap, Asa Maas, Kyle Matlock, Donna Mena, Jose Olazabal, Kevin Pham, Keehyun Ryu, Sharan Shivkumar Saboji