The UC Davis Department of Design presents Jesse Colin Jackson, associate professor of electronic art and design, UC Irvine, who will give a presentation on “Placeless by Design: Tower Apartments at Three Scales” on May 22 at noon in Cruess Hall 1105. The event is free.

The presentation is hosted by Professor James Housefield and DES 222.

Mackenzie Place (2023) concludes a trilogy of exhibitions focused on the
consequences of the architectures we construct. Each exhibition presents a variation of the internationally ubiquitous concrete tower apartment
building, inviting us to consider the evolving significance of these buildings. Radiant City (2014) examines tower apartment neighborhoods across Toronto, while Skip Stop (2019) focuses on the rise and fall of this building type in Toronto’s Regent Park. Mackenzie Place presents a unique tower apartment, located in the Canadian arctic, far from its usual urban context. In all three exhibitions, the depiction of the scale of the building(s) is a central challenge. In his talk, Jackson will explore the
evolution of my responses to this challenge across ten years of research creation.

Jackson is a Canadian artist and designer based in Southern California. He explores the architectures we construct—from buildings to landscapes to virtual worlds—through objects and images made with digital visualization and fabrication technologies. His interactive Marching Cubes performances and installations (2016—present) have been featured in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Mexico City, Stockholm, Tehran, and across America. Solo exhibitions of his work, focused on the places we live, including Mackenzie Place (PNG, 2023), Suburban Ecologies (Great Park Gallery, 2020), Skip Stop (PNG, 2019), and Radiant City (PNG, 2014), have been reviewed in Canadian Architect (2023), the LA Review of Books (2021), and The Globe and Mail (2019, 2014, 2009). At the University of California, Irvine, Jackson is an Associate Professor of Electronic Art & Design in the Department of Art, the Associate Dean, Research and Innovation for the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, and the Executive Director of the Beall Center for Art + Technology.