This event is a one night, outdoor, multi-channel video installation that treats Joseph Eichler’s Balboa Highlands tract neighborhood as both subject and object.<h3?
With their fortress-like walls and airy interiors, the Eichler houses epitomize construction techniques for Modern homes, and the piece explores the tract home’s iconic role in California architecture and history.
Using the expansive, impenetrable facades as projection screens, the videos show homeowners moving about inside, as they would normally be seen through the translucent glass walls facing their backyards. The projections are spaced throughout the neighborhood, activating a few houses, and implicating any of the tracts’ other 90+ homes as a possible projection sites, imagining the lives within.
The event aims to create a casual evening of self-directed exploration through the neighborhood, a chance to bring out the neighbors and public for a voyeuristic stroll through a Modernist paradox of isolation and openness.
The installation is spread over Darla Avenue, Lisette Street, Nanette Street, and Jimeno Avenue, off Balboa Blvd. The intersection of Balboa Blvd. and Lisette St. is a good starting point: MAP
Or use Eichler’s original site map below for reference:
Special thanks to Adriene Biondo, John Eng, and rest of the Balboa Eichler community.
This event is part of Machine Project’s Field Guide to L.A. Architecture.