Sabina

Sabina. Or at least Sabina as I always think of her. Actually, I see her almost everyday, because a photo of the two of us in one of the old ED11A drawing class reviews--me with a Strada latte in hand, adorns my hotmail account. Sabina is smiling--as she often does, smiling in the way she understands the world. A funny phrase, but I mean it almost literally. (Sabina of tilth...). In her language, too--how she invariably finds the perfect (off-hand) phrase to sum up something important: "Just in case..."

She came my way in 2006, from the architecture program at CCA, and a subsequent year's office practice that left her dissatisfied. Sabina's family is from Spain, and the firm had asked her to use her Spanish to draft an eviction letter in some kind of untoward real-estate deal. Not just unpleasant, but (in Sabina's view) an ethical lapse--so she quit. Came to Berkeley for the grad MA in Design--after a (wonderful and important) year at the Rural Studio (Sam Mockbee) in Georgia. Where she imbibed an aesthetic of hands-on low-cost make-it-happen architecture. Social Factors in real time, at its best. (Some helio-arc welding, too!) Her stories, the people she worked with, the characters, really--their aliveness--all resonated. And carried over into the work she did here--including a thesis project (set in the woods, of course) with me and Mark Anderson. Won her the studio prize that year!

But these are the externals. What shows best about Sabina is her intelligent enthusiasm--the Mauve? project, later, a miniature in-office work-environment gallery program--inviting artists to do shows on the individual partition walls of a UC administration building (thanks to Tarak as well!). Brilliant, off-beat, eccentric and winning.

How do we survive in this world? To do these wonderful things--so necessary, so crucial--and so unashamedly outside the grand commercial  loop? That's the big question. Here's hoping Sabina (and her friends) will continue to find their own compelling ways to answer it!