Project Series 36: "Inland Empire" by Predock_Frane Architects

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 6, 5 – 7 p.m. Artists Lecture: Tuesday, September 23, 2 p.m. Predock_Frane Architects’ exhibition, Inland Empire, reflects the artists’ interpretation of components of the built environment—regional depot buildings, big-box retail stores, mini-malls, housing, and the corresponding network of transportation corridors—common in the decentered landscapes of the Inland Empire. With this piece, the team deals with issues of globalism, capitalism, conspicuous consumption, design, architecture, and perhaps most fundamentally, the developing interactions between the urban, suburban, rural, and natural worlds increasingly prevalent in the 21st-century. Predock_Frane Architects was established by Hadrian Predock and John Frane in 2000 as a collaborative research and development architecture and design studio. Their practice consists of a dual, but intertwined, relationship between their building projects and their art/design projects. In 2005, the Architectural League in New York named them as one of six emerging international architectural firms. In 2004, they were selected to represent the United States in the U.S. Pavilion during the 2004 Venice Biennale, and in 2006 they were invited to participate in the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, “Design Life Now.” This cross-disciplinary approach benefits both branches of their practice—their art/design projects benefit from the methodologies common to architecture, while their building projects benefit from the more intuitive and generative explorations that inform the art/design installations. Pomona College Museum of Art