Archinect - News

'Tiny house, big impact': Marina Tabassum shares her flat-packed vision with CNN

2023-04-04T14:17:00-04:00

Past Aga Khan Award winner and 2021 Soane Medalist Marina Tabassum was recently featured in a short CNN profile of her ongoing Khudi Bari project in the coastal region of her native Bangladesh.

The concept, which seeks to deliver mobile two-level residential structures to a largely landless population in the heavily flood-prone area, first came about in October of 2018 and was accelerated by a pandemic downturn that ground several of her eponymous studio’s other ongoing projects to a halt.

Tabassum says the bamboo structures (whose name translates to “tiny home” in Bengali) can be easily disassembled and transported elsewhere, relying on steel joints and metal corner braces for structural strength. The design is split into two levels, with the uppermost elevated about six feet above the ground plane to accommodate up to four people in the event of flooding.

Image courtesy Marina Tabassum Architects

According to MTA: “The architecture mimics traditional vernacular language of the Ben...

Desert X 2023 features work that highlights the social and ecological consequences in our changing world

2023-03-18T10:00:00-04:00

The fourth edition of Desert X kicked off earlier this month in Southern California’s Coachella Valley with 12 site-specific installations that focus on ecology and the global social and economic consequences of climate change.

Artists were challenged by the “desert, its beauty, harshness, and ever-changing environment,” according to the event’s founder and President Susan Davis. Their responses included evocations of childhood memory, Native American customs, free trade, conspiracy theories, and popularized notions of the American West, among other inspirations.

Desert X 2023 installation view, Hylozoic/Desires, Namak Nazar, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy of the artist and Desert X.

“Desert X 2023 can be seen as a collection of artistic interventions that make visible how our energy has a transference far beyond what we see just in front of us in our own localities,” co-curator Diana Campbell says. “From deserts to floodplains, finding, building and developing tools and tactics to...

Desert X 2021 showcases site-responsive installations that 'refuse the notion of the desert as homogenous entity'

2021-03-15T16:06:00-04:00

In January 2021, we previously reported Desert X's plans to postpone the third edition of the Coachella Valley's highly anticipated international art exhibition due to increasing Covid-19 cases. However, last Friday, the Coachella Valley "opened" their desert exhibitions to the public.

From March 12th to May 16th, visitors can experience site-specific installations that touch on the desert "as a place and idea." By honoring landscapes and its people, this year's programming will "build on themes explored in previous iterations, looking deeper at ideas essential to the sustenance of our future and identity and the histories, realities, and possibilities of the Coachella Valley and its many communities," shares Desert X.

Never Forget by Nicholas Galanin (2021). Image © Lance Gerber/Courtesy of the artist and Desert X

Desert X expresses their goals of unpacking issues pertinent to what society is currently facing today. Topics include "the history of land rights, ownership, and stewar...

2021 Desert X postponed due to rising COVID-19 numbers in California

2021-01-12T15:16:00-05:00

As California hits a bleak coronavirus milestone this month, with nearly 10% of the population infected, organizers of Desert X in the Coachella Valley have announced that the forthcoming edition of the outdoor sculpture exhibition will be postponed until lockdown restrictions have been lifted in the state.

Desert X would have opened for its third edition on February 6th, offering both digital and in-person experiences. "In light of the urgent health crisis and surge in cases of Covid-19, the only responsible way forward to protect our community, health care system, artists, visitors and all those who volunteer and contribute to the exhibition is to wait until we are out of the lockdown period,” said Susan Davis, the founder of the biennial, in a statement.

The contemporary site-specific art exhibition, Desert X, returns to Coachella Valley

2019-02-14T12:41:00-05:00

Desert X, the enormous site-specific art exhibition set across the Coachella Valley, has returned this weekend for its second edition. Run by a nonprofit organization that includes artist Ed Ruscha on its board, the 2019 biennial features 18 works that respond to the desert's history and embrace a "range of ecological, environmental and social issues that have been driving conversations about our role in the anthropocene," says artistic director Neville Wakefield.

Revolutions by Nancy Baker Cahill. Photo by Lance Garber.

After an incredibly successful inaugural run in 2017, the biennial has expanded its programming this year to include film and augmented reality projects, such as Nancy Baker Cahill's Revolutions and Margins of Error, both of which bring colorful animations to the Valley's windmill farms and the Salton Sea, respectively, through the use of the 4th Wall app. Fifty miles away in Palm Springs, John Gerrard, the Irish artist known for his digital simulations, has brought...

Doug Aitken among artists in Palm Springs-adjacent art show, "Desert X"

2017-02-23T19:53:00-05:00

Amid the dust and clamor is the steel skeleton of Aitken’s “Mirage,” which takes the form of a 1960s-style suburban California ranch house. The seven-room structure, to be fully mirrored on the outside and inside, is perched on a hillside with city and desert views, which are key to the piece. The structure has gaping holes where doors and windows might be, and its interior walls are built on angles to reflect the sky and contrasting surrounding terrain...

What does the desert in Riverside County have to offer aside from a massive annual music festival, the sleek modernism of Palm Springs, and the ethereal vista of untrammeled nature? Well, starting on February 25th, it has the Desert Exhibition of Art, or Desert X for short.

Exhibitors in the self-guided, wide-ranging exhibit (you should plan on driving) include Doug Aitken, Sherin Guirguis, and Claudia Comte, who has created a 110-foot long stucco/wood sculpture that is part wall, part meditative exercise. Maps are available at the Ace Hotel; the exhibition will be up until April.