Vigas, 2022

Completed in late summer 2022 for Albuquerque artist and architect Bruce Davis, "Vigas" is an ode to the hard electronica I've been inspired by since I discovered Kraftwerk in middle school. Vigas are a component of the adobe building methods of Spanish colonists in New Mexico--they are the end of the roof rafters that were laid atop completed adobe walls in traditional buildings. They are also a trope--a signifier of "tradition" that has been quoted and re-quoted by the lineage of architects who formalized the adobe tradition, and sold it to the rest of 20th century America as part of New Mexico's magically "enchanting" visual culture. Through the post-War era and into the 70s, waves of Albuquerque builders included them as exterior decoration, not as structurally integral parts of their designs. As such, there are hundreds of decrepit, weather-eaten vestigial vigas on vernacular residential architecture throughout my adopted home, eroded into differing lengths by time, neglect and lay builder interventions to protect or remove them.

My design relied on the wonky grid of Bruce's cast-slab concrete wall. I was inspired by the visual rhythm of these artifacts.