Assistant Professor of American Studies and Design
I spoke with Brian Krans of the Vallejo Sun to discuss police brutality and protest history of the Vallejo waterfront – a preview of forthcoming chapter written with Prof. Julie Sze. Visit the Vallejo Sun (transcript included) or check it out on Apple podcasts
For KQED in San Francisco, I spoke with reporter Ezra David Romero about the condition of “sacrificial zones” – landscapes where legacies of toxicity become exposed to new dangers of sea level rise along waterfronts that are historically colonized and segregated. Read the story.
On exhibit now through summer 2022, Reset: Towards a New Commons, co-curated by Barry Bergdoll and Juliana Barton, at the Center for Architecture in New York City; “an exhibition analyzing architecture’s role in envisioning new dynamics of living and community.”
Our submission was Block Party, co-led by colleagues David Gissen (New School), Irene Cheng (CCA), and Brett Snyder (UC Davis). I had a wonderful experience discussing site selection and design strategies with the team, as well as meeting the curators that placed a ton of effort into the accessibility and logistics of the show.
Block Party: From Independent Living to Disability Communalism reimagines the architecture and urbanism of a section of Berkeley, California, through the perspectives of disability and housing justice. Created by a multidisciplinary team composed of disabled and non-disabled architects, artists, and authors, the project asks: What form might a multiracial disability community take today? What kinds of housing and public spaces could support not only “independent living”— a historic demand among disability rights advocates — but also mutual aid and communal flourishing?
How Public Scholarship is Helping Designers Rethink Communities From Independent Living to Disability Collectives – Professor Brett Snyder, UC Davis
Block Party in brief at Architect’s Newspaper
Anthony Paletta for Metropolis magazine: “(…)draws on the contributions of disabled and non-disabled architects and seeks to address a range of obstacles to a variety of disabilities; mobility issues are obviously often the most pressing but other disabilities inhibit the use of numerous urban settings. It starts with the exhibition design itself, which includes audio elements and a tactile model that was initially devised to enable collaboration with a blind team member.
Justin Davidson for Curbed: “(…)how Berkeley could evolve into a haven for residents with disabilities. In that egalitarian idyll, a public pathway shaves away a sliver of each home’s backyard — “borrowing” private property, in the project’s idiom — to create a network of accessible pathways”
Block Party: From Independent Living to Disability Collectives – Berkeley, CA
Javier Arbona, University of California, Davis (Davis, CA)
Irene Cheng, Cheng+Snyder; California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA)
David Gissen, Parsons School of Design, The New School (New York, NY)
Rod Henmi, FAIA, LEED AP, NOMA, HKIT Architects (Oakland, CA)
Jerron Herman, Artist and Dancer (New York, NY)
Georgina Kleege, Author; University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)
Chip Lord, University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA)
Brett Snyder, AIA, Cheng+Snyder; University of California, Davis (Davis, CA)
All the teams exhibited with online galleries and multimedia materials are here: https://www.centerforarchitecture.org/digital-exhibitions/exhibition/reset-towards-a-new-commons/
Uncovering kelp’s hidden past as an ingredient in explosives may have the answer to preserving its future survival under climate change.
The Explosivity of Kelp, at Society & Space open site (part of a forum on everyday militarisms born from our UC Davis – U Sydney collaboratory)
Recent award, thanks to the Center for Craft in North Carolina!
CANOAS, CAYUCOS Y BALSAS (CANOES, CAYUCOS AND RAFTS)
Diego de la Cruz Gaitan, MAOF (Materiales y Oficios, or materials and crafts)
Javier Arbona, Assistant Professor
Canoas, Cayucos y Balsas is a materials and process research project for the construction prototypes of a fleet of Caribbean nautical vessels utilizing materials form natives trees constructed with techniques from pre-Columbian times to the present. Our research intents to re-frame our current knowledge of materials and crafts in search of multi-vectorial interactions with other islanders. This research will allow MAOF to reactivate practices of the original inhabitants of the Caribbean archipelago, with the intention of returning the gaze and body to the sea and broaden the understanding of an island that has finite resources. The results and findings of the expedition will be published periodically through notebooks/publications and a website, which will function as a logbook and reference material for other artists and craftsmen.
Guest editorial published: Marisol LeBrón & Javier Arbona. The Funambulist 16 (March-April 2018) – Proletarian Fortresses.
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: 24th Street Theater, Sierra 2 Center,
2791 24th Street, Sacramento, CA 95818
Join us for “The Conversation,” a new public event series hosted by the UC Davis Humanities Institute that invites professors and public intellectuals to consider current issues of the day. The Conversation will offer an open format, including short remarks by each participant as well as plenty of time for questions and discussion by the audience.
In our first installment, we reflect on recent events in Charlottesville and New Orleans, among other places, that have wrestled with how we remember and memorialize the past. Monuments and calls for their removal have become flashpoints for wider debates about our history and identity.
Panelists will include UC Davis Professors Gregory Downs (History), a leading historian of the Civil War and a leader in the effort to create the first National Park site devoted to Reconstruction and emancipation, and Javier Arbona (American Studies and Design), who is completing a project on memorial landscapes, Black Resistance, and World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The Conversation” will be moderated by Professor Jaimey Fisher of German and Cinema and Digital Media, who has written about contemporary Germany’s relationship to its difficult past.
The event is free and open to the public. Please come and join the conversation!
This event is sponsored by UC Davis Humanities Institute
For more information please contact: Becky Wilson, rjwilson@ucdavis.edu
RSVP here
Recently published:
“Trial by the Bay: Treasure Island and Segregation in the Navy’s Lake” (2017). Urban Reinventions: San Francisco’s Treasure Island. Lynne Horiuchi and Tanu Sankalia, eds. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press: 125-139.
Find: ON WORLDCAT / ORDER FROM PRESS
More writings and works here