Site : Nonsite : Quartzsite

Quartzsite, Arizona is a town of 5,000 residents in the summer, located 180 miles from this site. Every winter Quartzsite swells with an influx of snowbirds, campers from across North America, generally escaping the cold northern climate in search of sunshine, the solitude of the desert, and the company of like-minded individuals. Up to 1.5 million inhabitants settle in town every winter, bringing their lodgings with them in the form of recreational vehicles or RVs. At any one time in January and February, hundreds of thousands of residents make this remote desert town into a substantial urban center. AUDC’s installation reproduces Quartzsite through an interpretive display. Visit http://audc.org/quartzsite/index.html to view the installation’s web component.

The AUDC project team on “Site : Nonsite : Quartzsite” is composed of Steve Rowell, Robert Sumrell, and Kazys Varnelis. AUDC’s goal is to investigate the contemporary city using the tools of the architect, the historian, and the designer. AUDC blurs traditional divisions between media by working simultaneously in print, web, video, photography, drawings, models, dioramas, and installations while addressing the particularities of each medium. Likewise, AUDC breaks down the boundaries between theory and practice by uniting both scholarship and design research.