MFM Portfolio 2023 by Marina Frugone

M∆®

Marina Frugone Molina

Landscape Architecture & Paisajismo Portfolio

Index of Selected Works Built / Professional

Academic

07 22

Sanctuary Pavilion 2020 Bi-national sanctuary park

Revealing Histories: Yurok Nation 2023 Alternate Visualization for Research

26 34 Marina Frugone Molina

Revealing Histories: Richmond 2022 Chemical Sensor Pavilion in a Historic Trail

Reclaiming the Commons 2023 Restorative Strategies for the Pajaro Valley

GroundUp Journal: Issue 12 2023 Editor, Curator

40 42 44 48 54 58 Landsdcape Architecture

Imran 2022 California Native Garden

Bloom 2023 ADA Accessible Terraced Meadow Navone 2023 Open, Airy, Entrance garden Adele’s 2023 Neighborhood Sanctuary

Lobo 2022 Play, Bloom, Run Re/generación Garden 2018 Los Angeles City College Community Garden

Academic Works

Bachelors of Arts in Landscape Architecture UC Berkeley 2020-2022

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

Master of Landscape Architecture UC Berkeley 2022-2024

Based

Park,

San

Friendship Diego,

this

proposal aims to

create

space

freedom

for of

movement

t h r o u g h

topographic play

and

s a n c t u a r y. Friendhsip Park is a

currently

bi-national

c u l t u r a l landscape, that is

constantly

m e e t i n g restraints in its

inhabitance. Its

lanscape

flux

between

is in constant landscape e l e m e n t s that

reflect

respective

contemporary politics.

For

e x a m p l e ,

community g a r d e n s are

but

torn

placed,

later

are

down

depending on

the change in immigration p o l i c i e s .

Sanctuario Pavilion

Binational Friendship Park San Diego, California Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

SERPENTINE GROVE ELEMENT PROTECTION INTIMACY MOUNDS, MEADOWS AND TRANSLUSCENT ARCHES POINTS OF CONNECTION

SANCTUARY PAVILION MONARCH + HUMAN COMFORT INFORMED

PLANTING CA NATIVES, MONARCH OVERWINTERING SPECIES, GRASSES & POLLINATOR SHRUBS

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

Planting Rhythms

HIGH

QUERCUS AGRIFOLIA

MID

BACHARRIS spp. ARTEMISIA spp. SALVIA spp.

LOW

ASCLEPIAS californica, eriocarpa, fascicularis, subulata

CAREX, FESTUCAS

ACHILLEA MILLEFOLLIUM

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

This proposal finds play in truth-- it is a vision of a place that could be possible, but has yet to be rooted in reality.

Zones

t for

Marina Frugone Molina

Human

intering Z o n es

Opposing the current form of movement (heavily surveilled and controlled), the design is about traversing through space without the feeling of being watched. It aims to incite not only free movement through change in rhythms, but also invite for a space in which play, rest, and protest can coexist. A long serpentine grove with hidden views, playful mounds, and finally a big reveal leading to the Pacific Ocean present patterns of: mystery/reveal, light/dark, tension/ release, which act as formal translations of freedom of movement.

rw ve

The prompt allowed for a 10% intervention on the existing border wall. For this, the transluscent arches frame the open meadows, which are the points of connection to the plaza that lays on the Mexican side of the border wall.

arch Butterfl on y

It aims to act as a sanctuary for visitors: crucial pollinators such as the Monarch butterfly and the families of those who cannot cross the border (either from or to the US and Mexico).

Landsdcape Architecture

Revealing Histories

This pavilion would be part of the McLaughlin Eastshore State Park, on the San Francisco Bay Trail. This extension connects Pt. Isabel Regional Shoreline in the South to the Richmond Marina in the North. The form of the pavilion, as well as its position had to be visible and accesible from miltiple vantage points, giving way to an architecture with multiple entries from different directions, convenient to multiple rhythms of mobility and light filtration according to sun patterns. The arches of the pavilion are points of entry into the space.

A Trail on the Richmond Bay

The serpentine viewpoints and

Richmond, California Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

form’s purpose to change the

was twofold: rhythm in

to which

call attention from visitors traverse the 15

multiple space. /

Through transluscency and reveal, The Light Pavilion is giving architecture to a large scale chemical sensor. The sensors lining the footings of the pavilion read specific chemicals associated with the waste practices of the last 100 years, some of which are lead, mercury, DDT, and arsenic (which are all currently active in the zone). This is the input. It then translates the chemical composition detected into a visual language through light (output). The translucency of the wood allows the light to travel through the material, creating radiance in the architecture.

Light plays an essential role in the design of these non-formal seating arrangements, which is a way to give intention to the placement of the structures. The serpentine form is echoed in a bicycle path extension, momentarily separated from the main trail. Cyclists, skateboarders, and other activities on wheels can veer off path between the boardwalks and the transition zone lined with Toyon, Coyote Brush and aromatic California Sagebrush. Its form momentarily reduces the speed, and has the opportunity to become a rest point for visitors. Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

Finally, the boardwalks, aligned with the apertures of the pavilion’s arches, draw visitors in and extend the total area in which people can interact with this section of the bay trail: Three distinct pathways lead to a set of light installations. Using the same technology as the Light Pavilion, each light frames a specific view forming a visual narrative of the different way humans use, are a part of, or interact with landscape: the port of San Francisco’s shipping docks, the city skyline, and Mt. Tamalpais.

As the projected Sea Level Rise

alternative visual literacy for soil

unfolds , pushing groundwater to rise

and water monitoring: to see that

inland, the Light Pavilion endures as

which we cannot see. They make

a constant chemical sensor exposing

The Light Pavilion has multiple structures to create informal resting spaces: the traditional bench and the composition

visible what otherwise would be

soil and water quality as it monitors

of various construction waste that can be found all along the McLaughlin Eastshore State Park shorelines.

imperceivable

for arsenic, lead, and mercury on site.

hroughout

the

site,

the

concept

and

technology

are

The

repeated.

Depending on where in the trail they are installed, the lights adapt in form and in scale of interaction: Further on the path, they are light “guides”, as well as memorials, taking the form of monoliths. Their

role is to guide visitors through the historical trail, and illuminate the memorial sculptures, respectively. Near

Which

Marina Frugone Molina

the

can

north

only

end,

they

are

observed

the a

form

smaller

pavers

scale

within

artificial

intervention,

wetlands.

up.

light

Landsdcape Architecture

guides

provide

first

glance.

The goal is to draw visitors that would normally walk past, into this space and start to spend a bit more time here. To then look at this structure and be met with curiosity- see the lights that the pavilion emits, and question what they mean: why is it pink? Well, because there is still lead in the soil. Why is there lead in the soil? What happens when sea and groundwater levels rise? and so forth. The office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, which bases its data of the census, placed the area adjacent to where the design intervention is at the 99th percentile for asthma, and 96% percentile for groundwater threats. It is placed at 100% percentile as a clean-up site with perpetual efforts to clean the site of its contamination.

The

history of contamination speaks to

What is missing is an experience for users of the site to engage with the site’s social history, and how its current ecological state ties in with its social past. Today, walking through the bay trail users don’t have a clue about the contaminants, the workers and their families that lived here. The trail aims to tell that story at large, through specific interest points that will bring people into this area through the design of spaces that are interactive, and also hold a contemplative character.

a repetitive human behavior of waste, or disregard of consequence and responsibility.

This kind of neglectful behavior coincides with abusive labor practices held in the area.

The story that Richmond has then can be met with a confrontational structure— something

tall, not necessarily plant-focused, which can be too familiar and passerby. Instead,

something that people can’t put a name to, a structure that will take them off their path

slightly, in an interactive way, but that would not jeopardize the purpose of the path itself. Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

The

Haunted

development

Marina Frugone Molina

planar,

representation

Landsdcape Architecture

overwhelming

logging

forests.

cartesian

landscape.

The second layer is a series

repairs.

that

ongoing

the

journey

justice,

conversation of

and

within healing,

reclamation.

of images of practices and

version of a map aims to

sacred sites on the landscape,

The third layer are poems,

show

such as fire management,

stories of dances, places,

that iscurrently happening

state

Oregos

and

their

around

reparations

rock as one of the sacred

are

headlines

landscape

sites, representations of what

moments that show how

Nation.

Yurok villages use to look like

the Yurok have been agents

traditionally

toward a reparative future.

the

conversation

the the first

Yurok layer

parkhoods,

pre-European

rather

contact, as well key moments

planar, showing where the

of reparations such as the

FERC

return of the Condor to Yurok

dams

are

located

and in a large scale. This

the

This

The

Yurok Nation

logic-based

for

Alternate representations

and

within

Revealing Histories

traditional, of

The Haunted Map &Timeline visualizations

Map

layer is traditinal, contains where the Yurok reservation limits are, the forest ecologies surrounding, and

spirits. of

territories, the renaming of Sue-Meg sacred site. It is likewise a mix of harms or

They

active

Traces of Harm through the Yurok Time Periods

Traces of Reparations through the Yurok Time Periods

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

Traces (in vertical text) run through each time period. A non-linear format that aims to represent how moments in time don’t exist in a one-time vacuum, but rather permeate through time as well as are a product of resonance from the past.

In this research it was evident that the Yurok tribe is an active agent in seeking reparations. They are leaders in carbon sequestration, reverting food desert conditions in their territory, aquiring land grants, leaders in fire management, and are continually redefining themselves as a culture. The language, dances, and customs are in constnat effort to keep storng, outside of the extends of the Yurok reservation boundaries. 25

PAJARO PARK

PROPOSED LEVEE

WET AGRICULTURE

WETLAND

RESPITE BOARDWALKS & FILTRATION CANALS

WETLAND PAVILION

AMENITY HOUSES

S SAL EEK

CR DES IPUE LEVEE SETBACK

WETLANDS

FLOOD RESILIENT AGRICULTURE COOP FARMING

NA TU R (SH AL L EL EV VE EE S S)

WATSONVILLE CITY LIMITS PAJARO CITY LIMITS

Reclaiming the Commons Marina Frugone Molina

Regenerative strategies for the Pajaro Floodplain Pajaro Valley, California 26

Landsdcape Architecture

Corridors and Canals (which speaks to Connectivity): It is a series of pollinator corridors that frame the main walkways of the landscape. Within the corridors and where we have many canals converging, there have been filtration canalas and sedimentation strips implemented to clean the water before it reaches recharge areas and the river

Groundwater Detention Basins: Based on where high rates of groundwater detention areas are located throughout the site. Pavilions also give a formal architecture to this place, and allow to develop a structural and cultural fabric throughout the landscape.

Amenity Houses and Rest Boardwalks: There’s a need for site-specific architecture that reflects the needs of the workforce.when you look out to the Pajaro Valley now, there is no sign of farmworkers other than when they are out in the fieldwhich impacts not only their physical and mental helath; but also impacts the ability to organize as a community. Each amenity house has a specific program to fulfill, aiding in this agency. Marina Frugone Molina

Wetland and Wet Ag Transition Platforms: They signal where this change of agriculture is happening in the landscape– and strengthens the culture that already exists, but needs spaces to thrive. Going hand in hand with the levee setback strategy, Pajaro Park, and regenerative agriculture activating the space.

Landsdcape Architecture

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

The design is based on a series of strategies that speak to the ecological challenges that the Pajaro Valley faces, placing at the forefront the social justice challenges to create cohesiveness. The Restorative Strategies are meant to work together as a system that can move the Pajaro Valley away from extractive behaviors toward regenerative practice. The historical flooding in the region has aimed a spotlight on decades of inequity in this agricultural region, where migrant farmworkers have long been marginalized. Runoff from record storms has left large areas of the low-income and mostly immigrant community under several feet of water, and facing a long recovery, therefore, water management through regenerative practice is a priority.

The speculative timeline is based on current efforts and farmworker led organizations. This can tell us what Pajaro Valley can be for the next generations

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

“Where does our body end and the air begin?” GroundUp Journal

Issue 12: Matter

BY VALERIE BEAUCHAMP AND MARINA FRUGONE

We sat down with geographer, critical cartographer, professor, and author Clancy Wilmott to discuss perception, color, cartography, and the measurement of matter.

Marina We’re going to jump straight into it starting with the basics. What do you research? Clancy I research the way in which mapping produces our spatial knowledges and the way in which our spatial knowledges produce maps. I’m particularly interested in the way in which particular geographic contexts give rise to particular forms of mapping. So contrary to the way in which we think about a lot of cartography, which is a particular style of mapping that is developed in Europe and then through the process of colonialism, based on what Gheverghese Joseph, of course, great European mathematics (which is universal), so this kind of cartography gets imported into places and those landscapes are actually really unsettled. They move underneath the map. I’m particularly interested in the disparity between the introduction of external forms of cartography and mapping into landscapes, and then forms of mapping that are much more local to those landscapes themselves. Marina We were looking at some of your lectures online and in this one is where you talk about the Green Park’s Red Dust research, we loved watching the lecture, and at the end there is a series of Q&A’s… Valerie ...and I think because our issue this semester of GroundUp is Matter, there’s a point where you answer with, more or less: Mapping is the measurement of the matter, along those lines. Can you elaborate on that? Clancy On how mapping is the measurement of matter? Yes. Mapping is the translation of our sensory perceptions into some kind of legibility, some kind of representation, some kind of communicative form. So we see something, we hear something, we smell something, and we translate it in particular ways. How we measure those ways is part of that translation. For instance, if we

So, I mean we can think about bounding, first and foremost, a not necessarily always been one of enclosure and containment, but also just one of expression of care. I’m thinking about different forms of mapping practice here where you look at the Rebbelib’s for the Marshall Island navigators, which are these stick charts and the bounding there is. Well… What is island? What is sea? But the sea is really the thing that is being mapped, different currents are being mapped, different movements. There’s a kind of already ambiguous sense of bounding there: they’re mapping Flow, they’re mapping Process, rather than just Object.

way. I think you can have a map without boundaries, although the map itself always has to be bounded, otherwise you risk falling into the map is not the territory kind of problem. Which [Jorge Luis] Borges talks about an emperor who tries to make a map of the territory that is so accurate that it ends up being on a scale of 1:1 [On Exactitude In Science]. So, it ends up being the same size as the entire territory and then he talks about the tad of remnants of this map actually just sort of being flown, like sort of flying tumbleweed across the landscape because it’s so big that it’s no longer useful. But, he wanted to map his territory in completeness...

FIRE

SOIL

I think as well with forms of bounding, we can also do forms of counter-classification, as well. If we think about it– we often map where fire is and where fire is not, less sometimes where fire has been, but we very rarely think of the world in terms of things that are burnable and things that are not as well. What is able to be burned? What is not able to be burned? Actually think about the world in these different terms. But of course, if you’re someone who works in a space of fire, you see materiality much differently. You talk about what is fuel and what is not. You have a much more geological kind of material sense of the world. I think if you look at different cultures and different spaces, there are these different forms of bounding. What is particular to the kind of boundaries that you’re talking about, are that these boundaries are very specifically designed to enclose and to control and to territorialize and to claim.

So I think bounding, it is kind of necessary, but that’s not to say that we have to actually accept those boundaries of how we see matter. That we actually can’t let the boundaries of things define itself and think about how soil is supposed to be in one place and not another place. It’s supposed to be outside and not inside. It’s supposed to be on the ground and not on the hands. But I mean soil is kind of everywhere and if you let something like soil, which has no explicit boundary, there’s no line there, but actually trace or move into spaces, then you can actually see sort of the production of space differently. I think the problem is the maps that we traditionally think about, love boundaries.

COASTLINES I’ve been thinking a lot about coastlines recently. We draw a line, this is the coast, the line between land and sea and… it is a myth. The coastline is kind of a myth. It is a zone at best, but even a zone has an edge. It’s kind of more like a gradient in a

Curator & Editor

Clancy Or like stuck it in something and just like, now the question is, “How do we find digital forms of doing that?” Or do we have to be digital? I mean, I’ve gone back to hand drawing because what I’m trying to do actually can’t be computed and I think that’s a failure of computing, not a failure of thinking. The fact that we can’t compute.

Selected Submissions

Valerie Then you have to photograph. Clancy Right, then you have to photograph and put it back in. But again, I think there’s also no pure process either. You know, we live in these kinds of spaces. I think it’s the job of academics actually to take the time to develop different kinds of colors or different ways of seeing or different workflows so that people who are in practice or in professional practice can actually adopt them as well. I think for me, I always say to my graduate students that academics are activists, but not in the short term. They’re very much long term. What ideas do we need in order to actually make change? What structures do we need? What concepts? What technologies do we need to actually do that? And we have the time to think that through. Sometimes we have a lot of meetings.

“Where Does Our Body End And The A r Beg n?” n Conversat on w th C ancy W mott “Nefert t s R ng” Low Estud o “Unfixed L fewor ds” There-There Arch tecture

Marina & Valerie Yeah. Clancy A lot of meetings. [laughs] Marina: Are visual representations of landscapes, maps? Clancy The thing is, I really love maps and I actually have really been enjoying looking at different forms of how we can bring the landscape into our mapping as well. Yesterday I was talking to Juniper Harrower [The LA River Project], who’s a landscape artist doing a project on LA rivers, But she’s actually used the water from the river to be part of the [painting]. That’s kind of incredible to actually think much more about the materiality of our mapping. In terms of digital stuff or digital realms, I

Marina Frugone Molina

Marina As landscape designers we use maps quite a bit. Right now, we’re working on the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville and just looking at the lines of agricultural parcels and then the lines of the river; this area is so susceptible to flooding all the time because the agricultural fields are built on the flood plain. It’s interesting to see that the whole cartographic history of the area is– you see just the geometry of the lines, it’s very rectilinear, right? and then you have the river as a curvilinear line, but really [with] a river, where does a river even stop?

would like to think a little bit more about the materiality of our digitality in the way that people like Sadie Plant do: to acknowledge that the history of the algorithm, the history of computing, has a history in the loom, in the jacket loom, in punch cards that were used to create patents. The idea that a punch card is an algorithm, as an algorithmic structure is incredible and, to not de-materialize our digital maps either, but actually to try and find ways of rematerializing them as well. I mean, that’s a big task, but I think it’s one that we’re going to need to grapple with in order to deal with the exhaustion of always being virtual and never really attending to the material. Valerie With landscape architecture, you’re working, you’re mediating those two worlds. You’re going from the virtual, which is the 2D, 3D drawings that we make, or the maps that we’re looking at, and then: on site. We’re constantly having to negotiate between the two. Then, there’s this encounter that happens when you go on site and things don’t match. It’s a precision that almost maybe is too precise, or there’s a lack of precision, that is these two discrepancies, but we’re expected to deal with those discrepancies. Marina It has to do with the base of everything that we’ve been talking about so far, which is what the agency, the authorship, what you choose to leave in, what you choose to leave out, also the tools at our disposal, what colors we have available, and digitalization of what we see in the outside world, and how we represent that visually and in mainstream workflows, and we have to make PDFs and all that stuff, and how do we translate that? So in that process, we have to negotiate with how much precision we’re going to put into it, and then how much we’re going to go out. And so, ‘what does precision leave out’ is a question we were trying to grapple with.

Valerie You know what’s interesting? We automatically go to water, but going back to soil: soil shifts. We have this tendency to contain it– even in drawing. I think there’s something interesting and it’s not necessarily any more water or sea. You know… Clancy Soil is also in water as well, which is one of these beautiful kinds of things. The thing is, in order to make a map you have to bound because you cannot put everything on there. But, why does the water therefore trump the soil in some conditions? and the other conditions soil trumps water? Valerie For some cultures there’s no distinction between the two. I read the paper the other day that said, Tahitians don’t have that distinction. Have you found with these new technologies that they’ve helped you deal with that ambiguity? Clancy No, they’re far worse in some ways because that process of equivalence: ‘I have some information and therefore I can tell you something’, just gets collapsed very quickly, often by software engineers. Those scientists who work in the field understand the steps that need to be taken to turn matter into sort of data, but in the lay world, for instance, I have colleagues who are remote sensors who will look at an image, a satellite image, and be able to tell from the different variations in the RGB channels that a certain kind of gas or chemical process is happening, which we know is particularly linked to a particular kind of tree or kind of vegetation, and therefore we can use that to map a certain kind of change. In the same way, we can use something like infrared to test heat, but the infrared itself doesn’t know whether or not the heat is lava from a volcano, that people are tracking the flow, or whether the heat is fire in a forest, or whether it’s a person, their body. Those are very different applications, but when you kind of begin to crumble these technologies together, you end up with an application for using this same technology, the same way of knowing about different

Valerie I think there’s also a notion about scale: it can be from a quarter of an inch of a difference that we have to deal with, or from a tree being missing, for example. Clancy I know the question that you’re trying to ask. This is something that I’ve been grappling with as well, which is, how do you- not just entirely about precision or even about accuracy but, how do you make room for the stuff that is left out, or the stuff that you don’t know? And I think– and bear with me because this is something that is still very much in process… It’s thinking about firstly, why do we expect an image, whether it’s a plan, or a chart, or a map, to hold all the information? Why do we give it that burden of everything? Why can’t we simply firstly accept that it’s actually just something? It shows some things. This desire for increased accuracy, I mean we can get as accurate as we want, but we’re never going to be 100% to the infinite level accurate because you’re talking about realms that just simply can’t exist because things actually are made of matter, they take up space, so you can’t actually kind of live in the theoretical world of measurement. Often as well, even when things are precise or accurate, you go there and things have shifted because things are always changing. You know, they had a problem in Australia with driverless cars, which were introduced… Marina Kangaroos… Clancy Kangaroos. The Australian continent is moving. Oops. We have to actually re-calibrate the geodetic datum every, I think– they know that 20 years is too long, so it’s got to be constant because the continent is moving so fast, it would be a fool’s errand to try and do that in Australia, especially if you have a 5 -year project. Well, you’re going to be constantly georeferencing all the time because you’re just on a floating continent. It’s not floating, but you get the point.

Landsdcape Architecture

forms, but it’s so easily applicable… it’s not– Actually, I often say to people that you feel the heat of a fire, a big bush fire. You smell it. The actual embodiment is something that is entirely different to the kinds of imaging you see. People who are experts on fire know that, but people who are watching pixels change across the screen in some sort of journalistic fire mapping don’t necessarily see that. Then they look at those pixels and go, ‘that there is fire’. I’m like, no, that there is a small pixel with a very high heat rating that has been taken from a satellite that was sent into space by the US government that is circling the earth– that’s actually not fire. That equivalence is something that only people who are involved in science really understand, that we’ve started with, you know, sort of pixel and ended up at fire, but that gets collapsed, basically. Marina That brings us to the collection of matter. I remember you explaining a little bit about how GPS works and how satellite images are gathered, or the grid tile system that’s imposed and cartography…. You mentioned LiDAR, or the pixelation of space. Do we lose in that– I guess in all the different technologies that you’ve seen how we gather data and how data in general is gathered to use for different applications– Is there anything that approximates this experiential collection that we as humans or beings who traverse the actual space can have? Clancy No. And I don’t think we ever will. People often suggest it’s because well, data is limited, we only get certain points from a point cloud or we get pixels from– we get GPS points, and then our bodies receive all the information…. but actually, as we put more and more sensors into the world it’s becoming the opposite. Those sensors gather far more information than we do as people.

I think we actually burden ourselves with this desire for something that is kind of impossible. It’s a fool’s errand. It’s a folly. This thinking I’ve had is like, “Okay, then how do we find ways of accepting those limitations making room for the things that we don’t know?”. Even the things that we couldn’t map at all and I’ve been thinking about first, this idea of excess: can we just put so much in there? Or that we accept that there is also an excess of stuff that exists ‘outside of’-- it’s just beyond. That actually, when we’re mapping, can we do forms of excessive mapping where we show so much information, or even, working with what Saidiya Hartman is describing– she talks about narrative restraint in different kinds of cultural texts, but could we think about actually going: ‘Well no, I’m going to put something kind of ambiguous in the map and maybe you’ll know what it is and maybe you won’t.’ That’s also kind of okay, that there is an ambiguity. Why does everything always have to be immediately apparent? I’m beginning to think through techniques we can use to actually promote an acceptance of the limitation of the map and also inculcate a kind of responsibility towards reading it. You have a responsibility as a reader to that. I get why people drive cars into rivers and lakes following GPS– it’s a structural problem whereby we have given technology and cartography way more authority than it ever deserved. The thing is, engineers would never– I’ve spoken to engineers, done interviews [with engineers] and they’re like, ‘Why do people do that? This is literally my job and I just kind of feel the landscape on my bike, like, I don’t follow that.”. I think there’s also kind of a sense of responsibility that we need to restore. Which is: No, this is not infallible, actually.

If you get a panoramic camera at high-res they see the world in almost a way that’s much higher definition than our eyes would see because our eyes filter at the edge. We get peripheral vision. Our ears will pick out sounds and block out others. Our body experiences feelings relatively to other feelings that we’ve had whether it’s pain or something is hotter than something else. Our bodies filter in ways based upon our experiences in space, based upon what you’re listening for and those experiences build. As someone who did not grow up in the Bay Area, I probably won’t ever experience the Bay Area with the same kind of attentiveness that someone who has. I mean, I’m looking for snakes when I go hiking and then I completely forget there are things called mountain lions because my entire childhood was spent looking for snakes because snakes are a danger, and so I am attuned to seeing long things moving, hearing long things moving, hearing hissing. In California, I have to keep thinking big things, big things, big things. There’s actually this kind of way in which experience builds and asks us to react in particular ways that I don’t think all these senses can replicate because all the information is equal to them. It’s got the same weight. Every pixel is kind of important. They don’t already have this automatic experiential way of understanding the world. Marina To that end, in your professional and personal opinion, which renders a truer version of space? Clancy I think there are different versions of space. I wouldn’t say one or the other is truer. Probably too much of a poststructuralist to make that claim… (Laughs) I think there are different versions and I think the trick is knowing what one or the other is best at. Maps are not great decision makers. The data on a map is not great in and of itself for decision making.

I think that’s particularly important with Landscape Architecture as well, because you’re trying to architect something that is fundamentally fluid. Marina And a lot of times we’re routing people through that landscape. In that agency, there’s two things: we’re following a route that Google Maps is giving us, for example, and we have the agency to either, you know, “drive our car into the river”, because the GPS told us to, or, you know, go through the lawn. GPS is saying, oh, go around the lawn, or the green space that is here, which is actually, you know, brown, and then you’re like, no, actually I’m going to go through, because that is the shortest way. Or I want to see this tree that’s here. And so there is that agency, that decision making that is, and you mentioned it before, that is so crucial to what sets us apart from AI and AI-generated maps, like your work in Cartotopias. You know, that [research] blew me away it was kind of like a really clear warning sign as designers: if we don’t make these critical decision making processes, or if we don’t learn how to incorporate critical cartography into mainstream design workflow, then, you know, in the long run, what’s going to differentiate us between the AI process that you’ve input in Cartotopias. Clancy And I think– I really enjoyed, there was a question, is AI a designer? And my response is actually, I won’t back down on this, no, it’s not a designer, and it’s not a writer, and it’s not an artist, and it’s not a cartographer. It is a statistician. You know, it is a calculator. It calculates and presents forms of probability, you know, at its base. With more and more information, we can begin to get more and more accurate sets of probability: probability that this is a map, probability that this is legible writing. There are ways of correcting it. There are all these very clever techniques. But in order for something like AI to be able to have ears that filter out, or eyes, or smells that create memories, we would need to grow an AI for an entire lifetime and fill it with information. At which point, I think an

It needs a person to look at the landscape and compare. I was at a workshop recently where some people who work on a preserve down near Santa Barbara were saying that they look at all the data, they look at all the maps, they look at all the sensor data, but in the end it’s their knowledge of the land that determines which information they weight against other information. At the same time, we can’t process big computational data as quickly as certain things can. We can’t see things… you know, robots, infrared, [are] intensely useful in disaster zones where people can’t go. Actually, there are uses for this kind of data gathering. I think there’s a hubris in assuming that one can replace the other. Marina Coming from the framework of critical cartography and post -colonial landscapes, how do the different types of projections play a role in the visualization of data? Clancy Yeah… projections are really important. There’s been a trend recently that I’ve noticed where, for many years, I’ve been complaining about the fact that Web, the Mercator projection, WebMercator, was just adopted, really, without a lot of conversation, as the standard projection for web mapping. In other forms of cartography, less GIS but cartography, there are many forms of different projections. From projections that look like butterflies to the Dymaxian, which is made of triangles, to different forms of projection. You can replicate many of them in some way for GIS purposes so you’ve got different national projections that you might switch between to get the coordinates right. But in general, the standard for web mapping was WebMercator and now they’ve started using WebEarth or something, or Earth Projection, which is actually seeing the world as a sphere. The world underneath the Google Maps is a sphere. It’s not a flat surface, it’s not been flattened, it’s still round underneath.

ethical question is raised: Does it take more energy to grow an AI like that with all these data sets, or to grow a person? Because the amount of energy it takes to run these AIs, to produce pretty sub-par student essays, and frankly, weird images, you know, we’re taking so much energy out of the world to do this. The ethical question is: If we can’t necessarily ever replicate human endeavor, or the endeavor of people who have experiences, if we want to think beyond the human, of experienced people, of lived lives (don’t want to be too much of a humanist here), but if we can’t ever replicate it, then it makes you really think about the ethics of using that much energy to do that. You know, we could have energy in which we feed people to write essays, to think, or we could have energy in which we feed AIs to copy what’s already been done. It is sort of said that these structures are unique, but they’re not, actually, because AI can’t predict the unpredictable. You’d run it through again and you get a different response. I’m like, well, yeah, but it’s like putting your hand in a bag of sweets, and you pull out an orange sweet, then you pull out a red sweet, and you’re like, well, those are unique. But it’s the same bag of sweets. And the thing is what you’re not going to put your hand in and pull out is something that’s not a sweet. The problem that we have, as well, is that we can tussle AI to try and predict worst case scenarios, but we’re seeing increasingly with climate change and even social movements that what we can predict is actually beyond the realm of what is being precedented You know, fires in Australia, they’re unprecedented. We don’t actually have a dataset that can reach what’s happening. The climate, the fires up in Vancouver, the same. Flooding– it’s all kind of unprecedented. The thing is a model is based upon what exists before. It sets the limits, and we can push those limits a bit, but actually it’s someone really who is experienced.

At high resolutions, it matters less if you’re looking really close, but I feel like that’s still a bit of a cheap fix because actually projections are really important ways of deciding what’s important. We say the earth is round, it looks into this round thing, but I’m always like, “Why is north still at the top?”. They haven’t actually tilted the earth. They don’t make it breathe, they haven’t made it fatter at the outside. It’s still just a round version of the same problem. Even though we can turn it around and do all this kind of stuff, we have this personal interactivity; I feel like that’s a neoliberalization of the problem as well. It’s like, “Well, we can’t be bothered with the politics of the map, so we’re just going to put it on you to deal with the politics of the map and you can make it however you want.” The problem is that the structures of colonialism and the impact that colonial cartography has had on the world is not just the problem of a singular person. These are structural problems that are embedded in those knowledges and so by sort of then going, “Well, Individualism will solve it for us.” Not every individual actually has the same amount of power in appearing in and through that map. I feel like projections actually– I’m writing an article at the moment– we should get back on the base map and start reclaiming it and start pushing these kinds of projections. If you look at, for instance, projections of different groups, North won’t be at the top. What will be important, East is very important in a lot of maps, particularly early Christian maps, early Muslim maps so, al-Idrisi’s map [Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Qurtubi al-Hasani as-Sabti] actually had Africa at the top, because that’s where the Empire was. Similarly with China, there are a lot of Chinese maps sent to China. In Colombia as well, the Colombian National Projection, I’m fairly sure, has Bogota always at the top. These are actually important statements to figure out what you want at the top and to do that in a collective way. Actually, we should be going forward and re-projecting and trying different forms of projection; different forms of thinking about how to present the world, different localizations. I

will always think about Tupaia’s map in this case: Tupaia was a Polynesian wayfinder and cartographer who sailed with the Endeavor and Lieutenant Cook in 1770, and he made a map. He was fairly unimpressed with the way in which the Europeans were mapping, so he made a map that is virtually unreadable to most, even very highly skilled intellectual audiences, which shows the islands in some form of relation, hourly. There was a paper recently written by Anja Schwarz and Lars Eckstein (The Making of Tupaia’s Map: A Story of the Extent and Mastery of Polynesian Navigation, Competing Systems of Wayfinding on James Cook’s Endeavour, and the Invention of an Ingenious Cartographic System), that suggested this map actually is based upon similar principles of Polynesian wayfinding, where the map itself moves around depending on which island you’re at. The islands are always mapped in relation to the island you’re on. So you have to actually turn the map and reimagine it every time you move. The thing is that, on one hand you’re like, that’s insane, but on the other hand, actually people across the Pacific using these methods with good success, not everyone survived, but with good success for a considerable period of time and it’s not that unlike what we see with a Google map either.

and able to theorize who is much better able to go, ‘this is not normal, this is not okay.’ You ask a firefighter whether or not this fire is going to go one way or another and they’ll tell you a different kind of story. I think the same with designers. There is an intuitiveness, ‘this is just not going to work’. I think in terms of AI, the dream is to replace all of our labor with machinery, but it’s just going to be a fairly repetitious world.

something about that. I always see this as sort of a description of: this is different, this is other than. This is outside the data set. This is something that’s kind of more ghostly. Tiffany King [The Black Shoals] talks about how landscapes fidget. The world doesn’t stay within these sets of data. It is kind of unpredictable.

Marina Then you just get into the philosophical conversation about the difference between work and labor, and craft. Martin Buber, he talks about this difference and it’s just that. What is our work, our craft, our labor? Maybe it’ll replace our labor, but that craft, that human input… Clancy And also the sum of experience… we are all in many ways genuinely unique because the sum of our experiences have built knowledge in particular ways. The sum of our languages, the sum of how we express things. Marina Like the use of poetry in your workflow, for example, as you did in that lecture. I think that’s a good example of that because you have that human element. Clancy There’s something that I talk about in my book [Mobile Mapping: Space, Cartography and the Digital] where people in Australia always talk about the sky being bigger: ‘the sky is bigger!’. The sky is not scientifically, quantitatively, or measurably bigger…but it feels bigger. People have hypothesized that maybe it’s because of the latitude, people have hypothesized that maybe it’s because of the fact that it’s so flat, that maybe the colors, maybe the hole in the ozone layer… People try and figure out what this thing is, why does the sky feel bigger? And we don’t really know. But it is a refrain. Is it just a cultural phenomenon that people say that? To me, the sky certainly feels bigger, when I get back off the plane. I’m like, “Whoa. Right, big.”. I think there’s

Marina Yeah. When you’re traversing through. Clancy Right, when you’re traversing, but unlike a Google map, you don’t need battery, you don’t need reception, you don’t need landmarks, you don’t need GPS.

Marina In AR [augmented reality] because of this unpredictability– it is moving with you, but is it still fixated on a spot? Or on these parameters? Clancy It depends on what kind of AR you’re doing. You can link it to certain things. You can link it to a GPS coordinate. You can link it to the camera. You can link it to a position that’s absolute and the camera moves. Or it can be linked to the camera which is relational, so it moves with the camera. Or you can do an absolute position on this. It changes depending on the kind of AR. But I also really like how dodgy it is. How it just never quite works. I think that’s really important. Valerie I want to go into the storytelling aspect of it because in this whole thing, there’s a storytelling component. I think I jumped to the chance to be here, even just to listen, because of the way you lecture… which is devoid of Google Slides, thank God. There’s a thing about using a desktop, about spontaneity, improvisation, things don’t work and you still go, using poetry, recordings. Why? It’s not just your portrayal of your studies and your findings, but has it also helped you in figuring out your work as well? Clancy I use Google Slides…. when and where I use them to keep myself structured on time and to a point. So I mostly use them for lecturing. I much prefer actually to show what’s happening. I think for me it’s really important that people see what’s behind the screen. What’s actually going on here. I think it’s really important that we see things fail and not fail.

Marina Does projection behave in that sense the same way as color representation? Talking about how agencies that hold power start to visualize spaces and collect data to represent these spaces: the colors selected, color palettes that are chosen, the quantity of colors, tones, variations. Do you think it says a lot about the perspective of the author and authorship of the creation of that map? Bringing it back to Green Parks and Red Dust and Google Maps and how it’s the representation of the Australian desert and the tones and hues of something that’s represented that’s way more closer to Hyde Park in England versus Hyde Park in Sydney, but the colors are the same even though one, that park is really not supposed to be there anyway and then two, it doesn’t even get close to the depth of the tone of the actual Australian desert. Clancy Yeah. I think they’re both parts of the same process of order. I referred earlier to this European form of mathematics and I argue as well, there is a European form of cartography of understanding that’s based upon universality. That there is actually an underlying, complete, always applicable order to which we can understand the world…and we just need to find that order. Franco Farinelli talks about, you know, God has created the world in stable systems and we just need to find the key. A lot of people like Descartes felt that mathematics was the best way at actually identifying these forms of order. Descartes being infamous for not just the dualism, but actually creating the algebraic geometry, which is the coordinate grid. The idea that you could bring measurement, distance, which we talked about, and number together in the same disciplinary kind of interaction. Those things became interoperable. This is a way of ordering the world. What we see with color is that actually color itself is still not– it’s also intensely political and intensely colonial. My colleague, Asma Kazmi, has done a whole project on the color Indian yellow and how that color is developed out of colonialism in what is now Pakistan and India, and becomes this kind of very political

think about the way in which mapping is the measurement of matter, we can think about the way in which we conceive of the concept of distance as being near and far. There’s this kind of relativity there and what becomes particularly interesting is that in mapping we develop less of the relativity of my hand, the size of my hand compared to yours as a measurement of the distance between two rocks or between two towns, but then it becomes a standardized hand. So, you get this kind of standardization– it’s all about: Are you trying to conceptualize matter? What is an object that we can understand? That we can say “this” counts? We could think about a tree as being a singular object, one redwood, but we can also think about a tree as being many objects. A tree, actually, one redwood sprouts multiple different sprouts underneath. A redwood can actually be sort of 40, maybe, if we count all the sprouts and we are only counting what’s above ground, or it can be one if we’re thinking about what’s underground as well, we’re thinking about it as a system. In the measurement of matter, basically, what mapping does, it actually pieces out; it divides the world into discrete parts. How it divides is actually pretty political. When I was talking about that, I was talking about the way in which we use color and forms of imperialism. The big problem I had was that I don’t just deal with these old school kinds of colonial mappings, I’m particularly interested in new forms of colonial mapping as well like GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth.I was particularly interested in these new forms of measurement that are appearing as we have new technologies to measure as well. We no longer rely on our bodies to make those measurements: we start off with things like... sextants, we have rulers, for instance, we’re establishing what a foot is, we have tape to make these measurements and eventually we develop trigonometry. We have all these ways of measuring, of counting, of pulling apart, of then creating hierarchies based upon these measurements.

color because of first, how you’ve got to actually develop the color, where you need to mine to get the minerals to produce that color, and then of course, the connotations to do with race and racialization or racial formation. With things like Green Parks and Red Dust and the Australian landscape, what’s particularly interesting is that there’s something to map in color at the same time color is becoming developed and becoming much cheaper, to use about the same time that we have Goethe doing his theory of colors. People like Alexander von Humboldt going around making or mapping different kinds of ecosystems. We get the formation of geologic mapping as well, which uses color to actually show geology, which is very important in colonization. It is also no coincidence that both von Humboldt and Goethe were miners at some point, so that part of Germany was very well known for having a lot of links to mining. We kind of get these kind of entanglements and then of course from this what you start then getting is that people start describing the different colors of places, but no one has a common language to understand what green means. So then Verna writes a nomenclature of colors where he actually provides a list of colors and the words that you should use to describe them because you still can’t afford paint. This is the same book that Charles Darwin uses when he goes around with a list of colors to describe all the stuff that he’s seeing in South America and also in Australia, in Darwin. So color itself has the same kind of order, the same kind of taxonomy and that taxonomy is based out of science, but very colonial science as well. Very quickly that science of geology becomes colonial science. It’s no longer just the mines in Germany or in Northern England, but becomes about the exploration of other kinds of landscapes and what those colors also might mean…

This idea of smoothness runs counter to the way in which I think about technology. The way I think about space. I actually think that breakage is really important. I think storytelling, anecdote, is really important as well. There’s a geographer, Doreen Massey, who talks a lot about stories as ways of describing something in the world and becoming these spaces through which things become refracted. I really enjoy lecturing like that. When I’m doing technical stuff especially, I never… I hate giving out worksheets… if I can avoid it as well. That Green Parks Red Dust presentation was great to actually be able to use a desktop in that way, and for it to be my desktop as well. That’s really kind of powerful to see how all these things come together. I think partly it’s my training in cultural studies as well. Cultural studies is a field that brings together multiple different, other disciplinary focuses. I also think as well, one thing I really disagree with and I am actively fighting, this is where I’m actually an activist, is the mystique of technology. There is this mystique that surrounds the use of technology and technological skills. That I think actually only serve to uphold White patriarchal and heterosexual modes of community as well. This idea that only certain people can, you know, you’ve got to be good at maths in order to do coding. No you don’t, actually. You don’t have to be good at maths to do HTML. The idea that this stuff is really hard, that technology is hard, that following the equations and engineering software is hard. I’m like, well, but so is reading particular theorists. That’s also really hard. It’s really hard to read people like Sylvia Wynter. In fact, in some ways I would argue that reading thinkers like Sylvia Wynter is actually much harder because you come to it thinking, ‘I can already read, so it should be easy’ and you get there, and you’re like… ‘What is…I don’t know what an object is. What is ontology?’

because I think what it also does is it serves to keep people out of those fields and serves to reify the power in those fields. Relatively new fields have a lot of money and a lot of power. I like to work in these really open spaces where things are just making, and hacking, and gathering stuff together because I don’t think technology is something that is mysterious, or powerful, or should be lauded. I actually think: Women sit around fires and weave and stitch and make food using mortars and pestles. These are all technologies and they were not hidden. But then we get chefs and then chefs get kitchens where all of their cutting skills are hidden? I think there is this constant thing where we hide everything. I think the same with academia as well. I am confident enough that I have done enough research and know enough that I can actually be imperfect on the screen and still have something valuable to contribute.

(Laughs)

Clancy Sort of. Yes.

You go into these text spaces thinking that. I really want to destabilize that mythology

Marina That particular lecture was so good because of that. You showed that value system. Just the fact that it was glitching or it was making someone uncomfortable because it wasn’t running smoothly. The whole time we were like, (whispers) that’s the point.

This animal is different. This plant has five fronds, this plant has three fronds. We’re getting these kinds of hierarchies. What’s particularly interesting is the way in which these technologies of seeing, as Donna Haraway would talk about, Technology and Vision, are being translated into contemporary forms of measurements so that we are not even necessarily part of the measurement of matter. That is happening almost entirely algorithmically. The data comes in through a LiDAR scanner or a radar, sonar, through GPS, and then it gets computed, and then something is kind of affected on the map. In a way, the human sets up the system, but doesn’t have any of the ethical questions in between. Marina What is really relevant to design–\ in your class in Locative Media, throughout the entire course, I was thinking, ‘every landscape designer should be taking this class’, because we use maps all the time. We’ll get into that in the next few questions, but it’s that the quantitative aspect of the necessity in order to make a map, you have to have this quantification, enumeration of objects and space and how in things like nature, like you said, the redwood is one but it’s also 500. Something that you said in lecture, I actually wrote down this quote on the subject of matter: “We breathe out air. Where does our body end and the air begin? Where does this dichotomy, or dyad exist? (Wilmott)”.

boundaries, the peripheries, and the edges of things, of peoples’ places in mapping, How important do you think creating boundaries are? Is a map as legitimate if it has an absence of boundaries? and can a map without boundaries even exist? Clancy Big questions. I think in terms of boundaries, it’s hard to avoid them in some ways. Partly because I was talking about what it means to measure matter and how you start with this creation of an object, and I think actually, that’s a really powerful process, the process of classification. For me, the difference is not the act of classification or taxonomy– I mean these are words that we use– you could also talk about ontologies as well, but I mean these are all pretty European philosophy words for a process that tends to happen in most languages; which is the drawing or the creation of objects in your mind. I think for me the difference is: Do we just accept and only work with lists of objects that are given to us from our languages, or from our practices, from our disciplines, or do we create objects from the landscape that we are trying to map to create these boundaries? You could think about different forms of bounding. You can think about a body as being sovereign or not. Air as being part of a body. Salt, as well, as being part of bodies, as part of seas, how do you even separate out– you’ve got a constant salt, but how do you separate out a grain of salt? I’m thinking about Edwidge Danticat’s piece [Beginnings, Endings, and Salt], I think it’s actually just called Salt, All of Geography Is Within Me, as well– which is a really beautiful piece about her traveling from Haiti and how that process of migration of the different ways in which salt works, it’s a really wonderful piece.

It reminds me of boundaries, something that is so critical to mapping or cartography that we see all the time, but there are so many things day to day that have no boundaries, like you said here. On idea of

There is this kind of relationship of order there that we can have a limited number of colors and I really recommend– in terms of digital color that gets doubly followed again because you get web safe colors, you get the hexadecimal code– Carolyn L. Kane’s Chromatic Algorithms as a really great book for thinking about the politics of color and how, in a way, what was already regimented just becomes further regimented in digital work as well. It’s almost like the more variety there is between screens, between printers or whatever, the more we try and make sure that things are standardized. Marina That always has to sink in because all we do is work in colors and think in colors. Valerie But it’s dismissed as well– it’s just a purely aesthetic preference or choice and I think that’s where people get it wrong, especially in the design world. Clancy But color can also be really, I mean I painted this room according to the color of the hills. We’re making digital maps for Sogorea Te Land Trust and our color palette is being developed from their gardens. We’re going down there, we’re photographing, we’re doing the process of almost transforming their rematriation process into the rematriation of the map. Actually, can we take the colors from these gardens and kind of move away from the colors that we traditionally associate with landscape, towards colors that actually are born from that landscape itself? There are sites of course where they’ve got a site where a certain kind of ochre is found, it’s a very precious color, I don’t know where it is and I don’t think they want to tell people where it is, but color can also be really sacred and really powerful as well. Again, I think we have a tendency, increasingly, to blame tools for problems that are actually very human. There are some tools that are designed with singular kind of horrible purposes in mind. Those tools are created to serve big structural processes like capitalism, like colonialism, like racial formation and I think when we

Marina Two, are landscape architects’ cartographers with lower case C? Second tier cartographers.

blame something like an algorithm, or a number set, or even a color list, or color itself for that problem, then we’re kind of denying the complicit ways in which these things have been leveraged by other forces that are seeking to basically make money and a profit. The same goes with Number as well; there’s nothing inherently terrible about mathematics. Again, [Gheverghese] Joseph argues: the difference is whether or not we use mathematics as a scrabble-inthe-ground, problem-solving, measuring, localized, situated practice, or whether or not it becomes an elite pursued by intellectuals who are interested in using it as a form of pushing ideology into the world. I think that’s the distinction. Marina I mean too, it’s balancing as a designer, pushing in academia and in professional practice…. Trying to push this kind of critical cartography into mainstream workflow, which is a challenge. The complexity of color is a way to divert from cartographic traditions that have perpetuated colonial mindsets. We’re stepping into a quote from one of your lectures, “It [critical cartography] asks, where the possibilities of emancipation, sovereignty, and resistance lie.” So, in my work, I get very picky about which color it is, and sometimes you’re going against how the whole system is set up, which is, “No, use Hyde Park Green”. Clancy Yeah, because that’s what’s easy and that’s what’s in the swatch already.I mean for me, I’m such a geographer and luckily I can afford the time to do this. I like to go to the site and go, “Okay, what is the site? What are the colors there?” If I can do, depending on the project, participatory color design, you know, actually what you like here, ways in which trying to create complexity of color. I love it when I give students tasks to go and paint or draw and they come back having actually taken the dirt from the ground and smeared it all over the page. Marina Nice.

my book about Cartotopias. I’ve always been thinking a lot about panoramic mapping and speculat

Clancy Yes. Marina Capital C? Clancy No, but no one wants to be a capital C cartographer. Marina Three, is design a part of cartographic reason? Clancy No. Marina Four, is design a form of ordering? Clancy Yes. Marina Five, calculating?

design

form

Clancy No. Marina Six, what is the problem with projections? Oh, that’s not a yes or no question. We already talked about that. Seven, is GPS subjective?

(laughs) Clancy This accidentally.

This is bigger than that. This person’s brain or body is different to this person’s.

performance

art,

(laughs) Marina We have one minute and we have fire questions. You can choose to answer using one of the following: yes, no, or you can choose to elaborate. One, do you think landscape architects’ plans and architectural plans are maps?

Clancy (Pause). Yes. Marina Eight, In a way you’ve already answered this, Is AI a designer? Clancy It’s so hard because I’ve got a bunch of random reasonings behind some of these answers. Marina Nine, can we or should we erase maps? Clancy No… No. Marina And lastly, where is your work focused on right now? Clancy Right now, it’s focused on writing

Navigating Google Maps’ Invisible Geographies

CDMX MONICA LAMELA BLAZQUEZ

Archive Director: Fabrián Novoa

THERE THERE ARCHITECTURE

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“ efertiti’s Ring” is a piece of design that merges computational design and digital fabrication to create a tangible representation of Wayne Shorter’s iconic

LIFEWORLDS There There is a collaborative architecture practice that fluctuates between design and research.

Design: Gonzalo Muñoz Guerrero @nomecalza Project: Low estudio @low.estudio Documentation: Fabrián Novoa @saintnigg

Archive Director: Fabrián Novoa

from so many merchants the WAY OF LIFE taht they have established.”Pedro Ordóñez (labor leader), 1901

it because it is disgusted by it, it finds it repugnant, it irritates its aristocratic nerves.” -El Popular, 1901

UNFIXED

alternates b e t w e e n synchronization and disjointed counterpoint. The result is a remarkable turnaround where the rhythm section is liberated. Despite the freedom of the rhythm section, the music maintains the characteristics of bebop jazz, with syncopated triplet rhythms and respect for key signatures, a shaped form of free jazz.

Exploring in CDMX, wandering in Madrid.

NEFERTITI’S RING

NEFERTITI “Nefertiti” is a ground-breaking jazz composition by Wayne Shorter that defies convention by placing the rhythm section at the forefront of the music, rather than as a mere accompaniment to the lead players on horns. On “Nefertiti,” Shorter and Davis play a truncated 12-bar theme that repeats with minimal variation. Instead of solos, the two musicians sustain an ostinato – from the Italian for “obstinate” – a continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm. This ostinato features a melody no longer than 33 seconds, which is repeated multiple times, creating space for Tony Williams’ exceptional drumming while Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter interact in an improvisation that seamlessly

melody in “Nefertiti,” from Miles D a v i s ’ eponymous album. The ring’s woven shape is the result of a controlled data flow design process, providing a physical manifestation of Shorter’s ostinato and capturing a remarkable moment in the expressive nature of jazz.

This video montage examines how Google Maps’ image of the city informs and shapes the way we know, experience and envision our cities. Google Maps has become the world’s dominant system of representation and a widespread tool to navigate and know our cities. The amount of data it is built upon, its capacity to incorporate changes, its crowdsourcing nature, and its global scale and accessibility have naturalized this cartographic technology, giving it an allure of neutrality and a power that no map ever had. But, as any system representation, its world map is contingent on the power systems that produce it—the image of the city it portrays, far from being passive, reenacts specific worldviews.

intriguing contradictions and inexplicable erasures,

(6) “people went naked, other STOLE to fuel their wickedness, [and] HOMICIDES were frequent. It sems as if we are talking about a city WITHOUT Religion or a King or Government, but all this happened in the Plaza Mayor of the Metropolis of the most Christian North America, in the great Mexico.” -Church Officials, 1789 (8)“To visit the BAratillo it is necessary to be one of the three things: a writer, to study the degree of IMMORALITY and abjection that those people possess, a doctor, to propose hygienic measures that may save us from CONTAGION; or a policeman, to prevent CRIMES.” -La Patria, 1891

(4)“the DISORDER that there was in this city from having the strands of buhoneros in the public plaza...” -King Phillip III, 1611

(5) “(a) commerce so PERNICIOUS and PREJUDICIAL to good cusoms and the public cause” -King Charles II, 1696 (7) “ a CONFUSED LABRYNTH of the huts, pigsties, and matted shelters... inside of which EVILDOERS could easily hide themselves, day or night, and commit the most horrible CRIMES.” -Viceroy Revillagigedo, 1789

“The Reper toire” Navigating the Perceived Tianguis

The Baratillo did not die but relocated, once again, to Tepito, where it has since become part of the identity of the so-called “barrio bravo.”

“The Archive” “There was this notion of it being a palce where there was violence, danger..”

“For me, Tepito means ‘Fayuca’ (contraband).”

Analyzing Mexico City’s notorious street market Tianguis de Tepito through Google Maps’ different visualization styles reveals

FROM DATA TO MATTER

design process that translates Shorter’s ostinato into a tangible object. Thus, the ring captures the essence of the expressive nature of jazz and a physical manifestation of Shorter’s music.

Archive Director: Fabrián Novoa @saintnigg

###

This design strategy seamlessly combines traditional d e s i g n principles such as composition, fabrication, a n d ergonomics with Shorter’s expressive nature as an artist. It captures Shorter’s approach to each note in the melody, including the way he m a n a g e s the air in the dramatic drop after reaching the peak of it, and reflects it in the geometry of the ring, defining the piece as much as the melody itself. offering a fitting representation of Shorter’s

a r t i s t i c expression in both aesthetics and functionality.

In the design process of “Nefertiti’s Ring”, various factors such as the size of the inner circle, the weight of the ring or the minimum thickness required for the silver to pass through a mold were treated as variables in an algorithm where the input are the frequency values of Wayne Shorter’s interpretation and the resulting output is the ring itself.

Marina Frugone Molina

“Since childhood people here in Tepido are tough and hungry.”

(2)“The Baratillo is a market that is part of the CUSTOMS of our pueblo and is NECESSARY for the poor of our society, nor is it prudent to strip from so many merchants the WAY OF LIFE taht they have established.”Pedro Ordóñez (labor leader), 1901

(3)“The Baratillo is DEAD! Or better said, the Ayuntamiento has killed it because it is disgusted by it, it finds it repugnant, it irritates its aristocratic nerves.” -El Popular, 1901

Computational design tools are a powerful way to manipulate data into multiple shapes or reinterpretations, with the tools of parametric design and a developed digital fabrication, it’s possible to work within a complete “Black box” design process that allows to create an algorithmic path from Music to Matter.

“There were many trades, but now they all vanished.”

(1)“They have always tried to destroy it, which was not taken place due to the fact that the Baratillo is clearly and manifestly in the COMMON GOOD for the poor SUPPLY themselves there for much less than they could if they went to those tailors who for their own interest seek to humiliate and detract from the public good” -Baratilleros Joseph Ramírez & Diego Rufi, 1709

“In the epicenter of the colonial city, operating under the gaze of the plitical and religious powers, arouse El Baratillo: a geterogenous and ‘unruly’ street market that would challenge the colonial order.

Archive Director: Fabrián Novoa

“... the neighborhood has everything and works on anything.”

Often erased from Tepito’s streets, the market’s existence can be traced through the trash left after its daily disassembly, or through the occasional empty skeletons of its structures, perpetuating former narratives of decadence and disorder. And yet, the Tianguis keeps challenging those stigmatized representations that have persistently tried to fix it since colonial times, and sudden glimpses of its lifeworlds occasionally p e r m e a t e the Map Based on an extended literature and cartographic review on the Tianguis since its appearance in the epicenter of the colonial city, supplemented by on site documentation and interviews, this video montage seeks to provide alternative modes of representation that defamiliarize the narrative of decadence, corruption and disorder through which Tianguis de Tepito has been often portrayed.

From El Baratillo to Tianguis de Tepito: Contesting the Image of the Represented City.

Archive Director: Fabrián Novoa

“We all grew up in the Tianguis”

which are further exacerbated through the physical experience of the market. Google doesn’t seem to recognize the market as part of its fixed “real world,” portraying its presence in an ambiguous manner.

Archive Director: Fabrián Novoa

“Nefertiti’s Ring” takes this 33-second ostinato melody as input and generates an infinite circle of the melody, an eternal ostinato, represented in the form of a ring. The ring’s woven shape is a result of a carefully controlled data flow

“There are many resources of all kinds, not just economic.”

(4)“the DISORDER that there was in this city from having the strands of buhoneros in the public plaza...” -King Phillip III, 1611

Landsdcape Architecture (5) so

“(a)

commerce PERNICIOUS

“It is an economic cycle that has never stopped.”

“I mean, we are very ingenious, we can reproduce anything...”

“Tepito EXISTE porque RESISTE & RESISTE porque EXISTE” -Raúl García, Tepito vendor

37 The Baratillo did not die but relocated, once again, to Tepito, where it has since become part

Professional Works Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

HACHA STUDIO Landscape Design & Paisajismo 2018-2023

5’

1/8”= 1’ - 0”

0’ 1’

Garden at full growth 4-5 years from installation

HACHA

IMRAN GARDEN

Full variety, complete design

10’

PLAN BOLD TREES ARCTOSTAPHYLOS AUSTIN GRIFFITHS CERCIS OCCIDENTALIS POMEGRANATE WONDERFUL FRUIT TREE #2

SHRUBS ARTEMISIA CALIFORNICA ASCLEPIAS FASCICULARIS ASTER CHILENSIS BACCHARIS PILULARIS ENCELIA CALIFORNICA EPILOBIUM CANUM ERIOGONUM GRANDE RUBESCENS ERIOGONUM CORCATUM SALVIA APIANA SALVIA BEES BLISS SALVIA CLEVELANDII SALVIA MELLIFERA SALVIA SPATHACEA SPHAERALCEA LOUIS HAMILTON MIMULUS PUNICEUS

CACTI, GROUNDCOVERS & LOW GROWING ECHINOPSIS PACHANOI AGAVE BLUE FLAME ALOE VERA SATUREJA DOUGLASII FRAGARIA CHILOENSIS PENSTEMON MARGARITA POP ACHILLEA MILLEFOLIUM SONOMA COAST MONARDELLA VILLOSA RUSSIAN RIVER SISYRINCHIUM BELLUM

Imran Garden

CA Native Hotspot

GRASSES & MEADOW MIX MUHLENBERGIA CAPILLARIS FESTUCA RUBRA SISKIYOU BLUE BOUTELOUA GRACILIS BLONDE AMBITION FESTUCA RUBRA PATRICKS POINT CAREX PANSA CAREX PRAEGRACILIS

Marina Frugone Molina

West Oakland, California 1/8”= 1’ - 0”

0’

1’

55 5’

10’

Landsdcape Architecture

Bloom Garden

Soft Meadow Montclair, Oakland, California

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

Hillsides

Muhlenbergia rigens

Eriogonum fasciculatum

Agave attenuata

Agave x blue glow

Salvia apiana

Epilobium canum

Aristida purpurea

Ceanothus ‘Ray Hartman’

Ceanothus griseus

Artemisia californica ‘Canyon Grey’

Mulch: ‘Forest Floor’

Aristida purpurea

Carex pansa

Bouteloua gracilis

Sysyrinchium bellum

Festuca rubra ‘Patrick’s Point’

Achillea millefolium

Penstemon ‘Margarita Bop’

Verbena bonariensis

Heuchera maxima

Leymus condensatus

Groundcovers

Verbena lilacina

Mimulus auranticus

Entry Pathway

Groundcovers

Satureja douglassii

Mulch: pea gravel

Navone Garden

Open, Calm, Welcome. Defensible Space Montclair, Oakland, California Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

Adele’s Garden

Dreaming of the Brooklyn Boardwalk in California

El Cerrito, California

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

HARDSCAPE PALETTE

PLANTING PALETTE GRASSLAND

Muhlenbergia capillaris ‘White cloud’

Muhlenbergia rigens

Pennisetum spathiolatum

Muhlenbergia capillaris ‘Regal Mist’

Leymus triticoides

Deschampsia cespitosa

Aristida purpurea

Pennisetum massaicum

Leymus arenarius ‘Glaucus’

Nassella pulchra

Bouteloua gracilis

Sesleria Greenlee

‘Red Buttons’

quartzite + pumice gravel

Timber Pathway

accent boulder: bird bath and neighborhood seating

Sesleria autumnalis

BLOOMS +

BLOOMS

Verbena bonariensis

quartzite stepping stones + pea gravel

Penstemon heterophyllus

Solidago velutina

Achillea millefolium

Craspedia globosa

Gaura lindheimeri ‘So White’

Echinacea purpurea

Agastache hybrid and cv.

Digitalis and Digiplexis

POLLINATOR MIDS PLANTING PALETTE Bouteloua gracilis

PLANTING PALETTE Gaura lindheimeri

Aloe vera

Blooms

Heuchera maxima

Aristida purpurea

5’ 4’

Solidago velutina Sesleria autumnalis

Salvia apiana

Artemisia californica

SPECIMEN

SHADE PATHWAY

Salvia mellifera

Epilobium canum ssp. canum

Ribes sanguineum

GROUNDCOVERS

Sesleria greenlee

Eriogonum fasciculatum

3’

2’

Melianthus major

1’

0’

Craspedia globosa

Iris douglasiana

Pennisetum massaicum ‘Red Buttons’

Grassland Meadows

Verbena bonariensis Satureja douglasii Baccharis pilularis Fragaria chiloensis

Leymus arenarius ‘Glaucus’

Epilobium canum spp. canum

5’ 4’ 3’

2’

Achillea millefolium

1’

0’

Artemisia californica ‘Canyon Grey’

Penstemon heterophyllus Leymus triticoides

Deschampsia cespitosa

Echinopsis pachanoi

CANOPY

Heuchera maxima

Iris douglasiana

Melianthus major

Satureja douglasii

Fragaria chiloensis

Baccharis pilularis ‘pigeon point’ Salvia spathacea

Salvia apiana

Pollinator shrubs

Echinacea purpurea

5’ 4’

Salvia mellifera Pennisetum spathiolatum

Digitalis purpurea

Muhlenbergia rigens

Digitplexis ‘Illumination Apricot’

Muhlenbergia capillaris

Agastache hybrid

3’

2’

1’

0’

Eriogonum fasciculatum

Backyard Pathway Artemisia californica 5’ 4’ 3’

2’

1’

0’

Ribes sanguineum

Canopy 15’

10’

8’

Arctostaphylos manzanita

Melaleuca nesophila

Ceanothus arboroeus

Heteromeles arbutifolius

Melaleuca nemophila

Heteromeles arbutifolia

Arctostaphylos manzanita

ADELE

Cercis occidentalis

6’

3’ 1’ 0’

HACHA X

ADELE

Cercis occidentalis

ADELE

Ceanothus arboreus

HACHA X

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

HACHA X

NOTES

hacha studio e c o l o g i c a l

l a n d s c a p e

d e s i g n

los angeles / east bay

Marina Frugone hatchetandbloom@gmail.com 310 658 7032

MATERIAL SCHEDULE STONE CONCRETE

SYM

DETAIL

FINISH

DESCRIPTION

SIZE N/A

QUANTITY N/A

BLUESTONE MULTICOLOR

24"x12"x3"

SUPPLIER

SELECT TIGHT KNOT GRADE WESTERN RED CEDAR

2"x6"x8'

SUPPLIER

COOL BLUE

STABILIZED 3/8"

3/8"

CUFT

SUPPLIER

SIERRA TAN CRUSHED

WITHOUT FINES

3/4"

CUFT

SUPPLIER

STEEL LANDSCAPE EDGING

BLACK

EDGING GRAVEL

BLUESTONE MULTICOLOR

hacha studio e c o l o g i c a l

l a n d s c a p e

los angeles / east bay

Marina Frugone hatchetandbloom@gmail.com 310 658 7032

d e s i g n

Drawing No.

Drawing Title

Project Description

North

hacha studio

Disclaimer

e c o l o g i c a l

l a n d s c a p e

NOTES

d e s i g n

los angeles / east bay

Marina Frugone hatchetandbloom@gmail.com 310 658 7032

Scale

Location

Project No.

Project

Drawing No.

Drawing Title

Project Description

North

Disclaimer

Project Description

North

Disclaimer

NOTES

WESTERN RED CEDAR BOARDWALK

14 ga. 5 8' x 4" x 64 "

Location

Project

EXISTING

WOOD

BROOM

DECOMPOSED GRANITE

POURED IN PLACE

Scale

Project No.

Colmet 8' x 4" 14 g. 5 pack - Home Depot

NOTES

Scale

Location

Project No.

Project

Drawing No.

Drawing Title

Project Description

Lobo Garden North

hacha studio

Disclaimer

e c o l o g i c a l

l a n d s c a p e

los angeles / east bay

Marina Frugone hatchetandbloom@gmail.com 310 658 7032

d e s i g n

NOTES

Scale

Location

Project No.

Project

Drawing No.

Drawing Title

Play, Touch, See Los Angeles, California

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

2018 2019

D r y G a rd e n

Pre p S t a t i o n

D e m o G a rd e n

2021

O u td o o r C l a s s ro o m

This proposal saught to create a community garden for Los Angeles City College. The concept was born out of the initiative of what was then called The Re/Generatión Garden. After years of meetings, budget proposals and activism, In early 2021, the proposal was funded by Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and launched as The City’s Garden- the college’s first community space of its kind. The concept as it was designed, highlighted partnerships in order to sustain the community garden as well as create a network of job opportunities for LACC students. My work with non-profit EnrichLA and Taking the Reins allowed to bridge these opporutnites and make them possible. However, the full vision of the space was not realized .

Fr u i t Tre e G rove N a t i ve & Po l l i n a to r G a rd e n To o l s h e d

G re e n h o u se

It was through this project that I learned the importance of community organizing within Landscape Architecture. The most important aspect of designing a space such as this, is having a financially and community supported plan for its sustainability.

Re/Generatión Garden

Los Angeles City College Community Garden Los Angeles, California

Marina Frugone Molina

Landsdcape Architecture

M∆® Marina Frugone Molina

2023

Landscape Architecture & Paisajismo Portfolio 56