Fritz Haeg: Projects

Haeg studied architecture in Italy at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia and Carnegie Mellon University, where he received his B. Arch. He has been a Rome Prize fellow in residence at the American Academy in Rome from 2010-2011, a MacDowell Colony Fellow (2007, 2009 and 2010), Montalvo Arts Center fellow (2012), nominated for National Design Awards in 2009 and 2010 and a 2014 California Community Foundation Visual Art Fellow. He has variously taught in architecture, design, and fine art programs at Princeton University, California Institute of the Arts, Art Center College of Design, Parsons School of Design, the University of Southern California, and Wayne State University in Detroit as the Elaine L. Jacob Chair in Visual Art visiting professor. Haeg has produced and exhibited projects at the Walker Art Center; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern; the Hayward Gallery, among many other venues in North America and Europe. Edible Estates in an important example of a social practice built around the intersection of food and urban design.

Fritz Haeg: Projects contains materials related to the Sundown Salon; Sundown Schoolhouse; Edible Estates; Animal Estates and, Designing, Constructing, Parading, Rewilding Projects.

Sundown Salon gatherings occurred on periodic Sunday afternoons from 2001-2006 in Haeg’s geodesic dome house on Sundown Drive, and involved an extended community of friends, collaborators and peers from Los Angeles and beyond through events, happenings, gatherings, meetings, pageantry, performances, shows, stunts and spectacles. In 2009 “Salon Colada: Miami” was presented by MOCA Miami and “The Sundown Salon Unfolding Archive” (Evil Twin Publications) was released, documenting the series of events with photos and stories contributed by hundreds of the artists who participated. The 380 page accordion folding book unfurls to become a 140 foot long instant exhibition. In 2006 Sundown Salon transformed into Sundown Schoolhouse, an evolving educational environment originally based in the geodesic dome. The Schoolhouse was itinerant from 2007 to 2012, functioning at times as the personal school of chief student Fritz Haeg. Programming guided by his curiosities and housed in a series of dome tent environments where local artists and experts lead workshops, classes and seminars around particular themes and topics. Highlights include Practicing Moving at the Center for the Arts Eagle Rock, Sundown Schoolhouse of Queer Home Economics at the Hayward Gallery in London, and At Home in L.A. at Human Resources. In summer 2014 the Schoolhouse re-launches regular seasonal enrollment programming at its home base with the 12 week session of The Los Angeles Seminary for Embodied and Civic Arts.

Edible Estates was initiated on Independence Day 2005 with the planting of the first in the series of gardens in Salina, Kansas, the geographic center of the United States. Domestic front lawns are replaced with edible landscapes which are then documented in photos, videos, stories, printed materials, and exhibitions. Other regional prototype gardens have since been planted in Lakewood, CA in 2006; Maplewood, NJ and London in 2007; Austin, Baltimore, and Descanso Gardens, Los Angeles in 2008; Manhattan in 2009; Ridgefield, CT and Rome in 2010; Istanbul in 2011; Budapest, Hungary in 2012. The final four editions are planted in Holon, Israel; Aarhus, Denmark; Vasby, Sweden; and Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN in 2013, followed by the 2014 publication of the expanded third edition of the book, "Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn" (Metropolis Books, 2010), documenting all sixteen gardens in the series, with stories from the garden owners, and framed by essays from renowned garden writers.
Edible Estates is an ongoing initiative to create a series of regional prototype gardens that replace domestic front lawns, and other unused spaces in front of homes, with places for families to grow their own food. The sixteen gardens have been established in cities across the world. Adventurous residents in each town have offered their front yards as working prototypes for their region. Each of these highly productive gardens is very different, designed to respond to the unique characteristics of the site, the needs and desires of the owner, the community and its history, and the local climate and geography.

Animal Estates proposed the strategic reintroduction of native animals into our cities with an ongoing series of regional events, publications, exhibitions, and estate designs. The project debuted in New York City at the 2008 Whitney Biennial with commissioned performances and installations in front of the museum, including a 10 foot diameter eagle’s nest perched over the entry canopy. It was followed by six other editions in 2008, commissioned by museums and art institutions in the U.S. and abroad including Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, Cambridge; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Casco, Utrecht; Cooley Gallery at Reed College, Portland; and most recently Animal Estates London HQ: Urban Wildlife Client Services at Arup Phase 2 in 2011 and The Port of Rotterdam in 2013.

Designing, Constructing, Parading, Rewilding was a series of related projects – dating back to his early architecture work – that span a wide range of sizes and durations include designs for buildings, temporary encampments, scores for processions, knitted wearable sculptures and native landscape restorations. Examples include the Bernardi Residence in the Silver Lake hills of Los Angeles featured in the New York Times; the gallery design for peres projects in Los Angeles’ Chinatown; the score for the East Meets West Interchange Overpass Parade (2008), commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art; a ground floor installation Dome Colony X in the San Gabriels (2009) at X Initiative in Manhattan; Something for Everyone (2010), projects throughout the grounds of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; Composted Constructions (2011), a series of fabrications of recycled materials in Den Haag commissioned by Stroom; The Princeton Student Colony (2012); The Everton Park Foraging Spiral and Basecamp commissioned for the 2012 Liverpool Biennial; the Foraging Circle,(2013) a permanent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden/Walker Art Center installation; the native wildflower sowing initiative, Wildflowering L.A. (2013-14); and in 2014 a new series of cape/caftan/Parangolés/scarf/shawl/vestment/wrap knitted wearable sculptures.

Materials include articles, brochures, and exhibition and project ephemera.

• Series 1: General Exhibition/Events Ephemera
• Series 2: Designing
• Series 3: Sundown Salon (Project dates: 2001 – 2006)
• Series 4: Edible Estates (Project dates: 2005 – 2013)
• Series 5: Sundown Schoolhouse (Project dates: 2006 – 2012
• Series 6: Animal Estates (Project dates: 2008 – ongoing)
• Series 7: Salmon Creek Farm (Project dates: 2014 – ongoing)

• CAE1406: Amy Franceschini and Michael Tausig: This is not a Trojan Horse