I was fascinated when I first visited the Albany Bulb in 2002 - a decommissioned landfill peninsula on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay, that until their eviction served as home, art studio and creative reuse platform to a number of Albany's homeless population. I wanted to question how I understood it as a landscape architect and used my masters thesis as a platform to advocate for site-informed change by revealing the inherent beauty of this particular history, dialogue and place.
I have since used the Albany Bulb as a site for my design studios as a Visiting Instructor at UC Berkeley and the work produced has been invited to be a part of a new exhibition at SOMArts titled Refuge in Refuse: Homesteading Art & Culture Project. The show utilizes audio stories, video, photography, 3D scans, maps and interventions to reflect the intersections of visual art and media, urban planning, landscape architecture, archaeology, ecology and community at the bulb.
The exhibit runs from February 12-March 14
“Boxer Bob with Sugar Ray at Landfill Mansion” 32 x 50 inch archival ink jet photograph by Robin Lasser, 2014