As a radical form of renewal, prototype 180 is a collection of processes that utilize unsuspecting materials to make the landscape of the built environment perform. It expands the trajectory of land art through Bilbao to the present. These materials include policy, land use planning, and technology. It is a reconsideration of monumentality in performance, sculpture, architecture/landscape and technology. prototype 180 expands the historical timeline of the land art projects from the 60s and 70s (The Lightning Fields, Spiral Jetty, The Sun Tunnels, etc.) through architecture’s usurpation of art in the 90s (Bilbao) to the present political epoch where Houston’s land use policy (no zoning) has determined its location. In conception and planning since 1999, the physical site is located in the post WWII development of Sharpstown in southwest Houston, Texas. As a living model it is temporally, physically, and structurally organized around the catalytic rotation of the single family, post-war home and the surrounding acreage that took place on November 11, 2010.
While the relocation interrupted the relation of the house to its urban context and existing street typologies, it also signified a program that privileged its location within culture and retrofitting as a sustainable design approach. On November 11, 2018,
the structure at the site was unbuilt in front of the public for the performance, “Daringly Unbuilt.” prototype 180 utilizes policy as a material within the landscape of the cultural realm to make visible the blindspots that impact the socio-economic sectors of the area to focus on the underresourced through applied conservation. prototype 180 strategically intersects conceptual art, land art, planning, technology, architecture, environmentalism, social justice, urban legislation and economics.