City #1: Irvine is a vertically exaggerated scale model of the City of Irvine’s terrain, created specifically for Art at City Hall.
When Suburban Ecologies was partially reconfigured at the Irvine Civic Center as the city’s inaugural Art at City Hall event, Watershed #2: Santa Ana didn’t fit in the exhibition space. In its place, as a topographically adjacent experiment in my ongoing Marching Cubes series of projects, I created City #1: Irvine.
The City of Irvine is located in a broad valley in Southern California’s Peninsular Ranges that primarily drains into the urban waterway of San Diego Creek. Historically, San Diego Creek and the Santa Ana River would have drained into the Pacific Ocean together as part of a complex seasonal ecosystem, draining the fertile coastal plains of what is now known as Orange County. Today, constructed control infrastructure maintains separation between these two watersheds, contributing to the ecological illegibility of the landscape.
City #1: Irvine is the third in a series of Marching Cubes assemblies derived from the places I occupy in Southern California, after Watershed #2: Santa Ana and After Halliburton.
Marching Cubes City #1: Irvine
Assembly from modular components. 3D-printed PLA plastic, neodymium magnets, steel plate. 62″H x 96”W x 96”L. Components 2016-2019, assembly 2021.
