trujillo adobe, riverside CA
We are honored to announce the project was included in the US Pavilion of the 2018 Architecture Biennale in Venice Italy, as part of the digital series "New Forms of Citizenship"
The Trujillo Adobe (built 1842 La Placita de los Trujillos) stands in disrepair in the Northside neighborhood of Riverside, CA. The Trujillo family, together with the neighboring communities around the Santa Ana River & Agua Mansa, comprised the largest non-native settlement between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California in the first half of the 19th century.
In an ongoing recovery & archaeological project with The Spanish Trail Heritage Foundation, and the Geophysics Department California State Polytechnic University Pomona, WGA is the consulting architecture team member on the project, providing master planning services along with preservation and architectural services. The Cal Poly Geophysics Department is providing subsurface x-ray scanning of the ground beneath the former settlement; their archaeological work in surveying the site has recorded evidence of old irrigation canals and farming equipment lost in the great flood of 1862.
A race to delay inevitable collapse of the Adobe is the primary task at hand, but also equally important is the broad endeavor to re-establish a settlement by Latinos as the foundational heritage in Riverside, California (as opposed to a fantasy heritage of Anglo settlements promoted as “firsts” in the area).
We are interested in how the Cal Poly Pomona geophysical map with our architectural intervention might modulate the “historical” structure towards enhanced operability in the realms of local citizens rights to heritage and the forces of influence?
UNBUILT 2018
The Trujillo Adobe recovery project is an ongoing collaborative effort with The Spanish Trail Heritage Foundation, California State Polytechnic University Pomona, and Wendy Gilmartin Architecture.
All refractometric images shown above are by the Geophysics Department California State Polytechnic University Pomona
.