The broad topic of this year’s Advanced Design-Research curriculum is a deep consideration of California’s ‘Other’ – the invisibilities of violence and work, land and labor that fuel the nation – calorically and economically – specifically in the Tulare Lake Basin. Starting with the reemergence of the lake that has captured the nation’s imagination – a phantom that reemerges despite the industrial violence used to erase it – its story has become a symbol of a possible future, of liberation and transcendence, within and despite Capitalist ruins. Yet this offer of transcendence has nuance – with the engineering that hijacked the lake to facilitate 150 years of industrial agriculture came communities of people stolen for and drawn by capitalist promise that have been impacted by the flooding. Designing a nuanced future that negotiates what was, what is, and what can be in this landscape is the primary question.
