Yucca Crater. A swimming pool access, a sculpture or a new landscape?
22/05/2012.
by Ball-Nogues Studio. Near 29 Palms [California] USA
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
Using and across applications and materials, Ball-Nogues Studio made an artistic proposal for the High Desert Test Sites where it is mixed, art, art public use, recycling of materials and intervention in the desert landscape through a piece that also takes their ideas of Land art. A swimming pool access, a sculpture or a new landscape?
Interior swimming pool. Yucca Crater by Ball-Nogues Studio. Photography © Scott Mayoral.
Yucca Crater by Ball-Nogues Studio. Photography © Scott Mayoral.
Swimming pool view. Yucca Crater by Ball-Nogues Studio. Photography © Scott Mayoral.
Yucca Crater by Ball-Nogues Studio. Photography © Scott Mayoral.
Exterior view, wood structure. Yucca Crater by Ball-Nogues Studio. Photography © Scott Mayoral.
Yucca Crater by Ball-Nogues Studio. Photography © Scott Mayoral.
Night interior view swimming pool. Yucca Crater by Ball-Nogues Studio. Photography © Scott Mayoral.
Located in the barren desert near Joshua Tree National Park, 15 miles from the nearest human settlement, Yucca Crater is a synthetic earthwork that doubled as a recreational amenity during High Desert Test Sites on October 15 & 16, 2011. High Desert Test Sites generates physical and conceptual spaces for art exploring the intersections between contemporary art and life at large. After the event, Yucca Crater was abandoned to the entropic forces of the landscape.
The work resembles a basin that stands 30 feet from rim to low point and is depressed 10 feet into the earth. Rock climbing holds mounted on the interior allow visitors to descend into a deep pool of salt water.
Yucca Crater expands on concepts borrowed from land art, incorporating the prospect of the abandoned suburban swimming pools and ramshackle homestead dwellings scattered across the Mojave. Ball Nogues have re-imagined these interventions in the landscape through a method of production where the tools of fabrication transform to be become objects for display in their own right. The rough plywood structure of Yucca Crater was originally the formwork used to construct another Ball-Nogues work, Talus Dome, in which more than 900 boulder-sized polished metal spheres were assembled to appear as a monumental pile of gravel. The two projects were “cross-designed” such that the method of production used in the first (Talus Dome) has become the central aesthetic for the second (Yucca Crater).
This approach integrates concept, aesthetics, a social event and production, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship to art by-products while repositioning them within an alternative economic and geographic domain.
This project was made possible with the support of United States Artists Projects.
Desiners and Principals in Charge: Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues.
Project Manager: Benjamin Jenett.
Project Team: Karla Castillo, Deborah Chang, Tyler Crain, Constantina Dendramis, Jessica DeVries, Julieta Gil, James Jones, Isabel Francoy Albert, Luciana Martinez, Nicolas Pappas, Allison Porterfield, Samantha Rose, Ron Shvartsman, Caroline Smith, Alejandra Sotelo, Jess Thomas, Julianne Weiss, Evan Wiskup.
Structural Engineer: Buro Happold, Los Angeles.
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BALL - NOGUES STUDIO
Benjamin Ball grew up in Colorado and Iowa where his mother's involvement in theatre proved influential. While studying for his degree at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Ball logged stints at Gehry Partners and Shirdel Zago Kipnis. Upon graduation, he sought work as a set and production designer for films (including the Matrix series) as well as music videos and commercials with such influential directors as Mark Romanek and Tony Scott. His experience ranges from work on the Disney Concert Hall and small residential commissions for boutique firms to complex medical structures and event design. In his current collaboration with Gaston Nogues, Ball is exploring the intersection of architecture, art and product design through physical modeling and the use of digital and more traditional forms of production.
Gaston Nogues was born and raised in Buenos Aires before moving to Los Angeles at age 12. Frequently accompanying his father to his job as an aerospace engineer, Nogues acquired a fascination with the hands-on process of building. An honors graduate in architecture from SCI-Arc, he moved directly from school into a position at Gehry Partners where he worked in product design and production and became a specialist in creative fabrication. He remained there until 2005 except for a one-year stint in 1996 as an assistant curator at a fine arts publishing house, Gemini GEL. In his current collaboration with Benjamin Ball, Nogues is focused on fabricating what they visualize; on process as it relates to the built object. In his spare time, Nogues builds custom automobiles.
BALL-NOGUES STUDIO. In 2007, the Studio was the winner of the Museum of Modern Arts PS1 Young Architects Program Competition. Recently, their work became part of the permanent collection of MoMA. In 2011 they were one of the Architectural League of New York's Emerging Voices. The studio is currently working on permanent public commissions for Los Angeles World Airports; the City of West Hollywood; the City of Edmonton, Alberta; the County of San Diego; Nashville Music City Center; as well as Dallas Love Field Airport.
