I really began to understand that inside the heart of the most passionate architect is an artist who has ideas that are pushing against what's conventional, and they do not have an outlet for that. Welcome to Archonnex Sessions 1-1. I'm Amelia Taylor-Pauperg, and this week, November 23rd, 2015, I talked with Jenna Didier, founder of Materials and Applications Gallery in Silver Lake Los Angeles. Didier, who has a background in robotics and sculpture, started the gallery in 2002, in the front yard of her own home.
Designers would create big installations in what used to be her driveway, and she'd open it up to anyone walking by. Didier no longer lives at the house, but materials and applications continues to thrive, serving as a kind of temporary headquarters for artists and architects to meet and host events in LA. Architects John Southern, Jenny Wu, and Dwayne Euler of Euler, Wu collaborative, and Benjamin Ball and guests and Nolks of Ball Nolks have designed pieces for materials and applications in the past, and the upcoming installation will be a riff on MiniGolf. While Didier no longer oversees the day-to-day of materials and applications, she's now developing a new practice, urban applications, that works with communities beyond her driveway.
She came by our studio to talk with me about the gallery as a social movement, and how our own art practice works with responsive environments. I hope you enjoy my one-to-one talk with Jenna Didier. I kind of made studio for many years, not many, a couple years. James Terrell talks about that about making studio when you're starting out of your space.
Of your space, and that sort of becomes more of a focus than actually making anything else, because you're starting out for me. I was just starting out and I didn't really know what kind of space I needed to work in. Well, and that certainly parlays into your work with materials and applications. So first, let me just hear about how you came to Los Angeles.
Well, I started out in the Midwest, and San Francisco is kind of the great portal to the Midwest for most of us, because it's more approachable and seemingly more pretty from the outside. I visited a lot in my childhood. So I started there and built a lot of robots and rode around in my motorcycle and terrorized the citizenry for a while until I realized that I wasn't going to be able to make a living doing that. And so all the kids and adults that were in San Francisco making living, doing things that I wanted to do, people like Adam Savage, who's now a big shot in the maker world.
They said, look, you got to go to Los Angeles, you got to cut your teeth. There's a lot of opportunity there. You can build weird stuff and get paid. And then in a decade when you're ready, come on back up and maybe they'll be some more care for you.
So that was 1998. That was a while ago. I decided that LA was a place where there's a lot more opportunity, and it's been great ever since I got here. And so you were kind of a part of the what would now be referred to as the maker community, authorities in San Francisco?
Yeah, I guess you'd now refer to that back then. It was the machine art scene. We're kind of in the middle of the machine art days. SRL was still going strong.
I was working for a G. G. McMurtry at Amorphic Robot Works. He's pulled out and he's in New York.
There were other random, mostly robotic-centered groups in San Francisco. And so what drew you to working with robots in particular? I wanted to build, well, I started out building fountains in the Midwest. I was doing that in the summertime and in between years in college and ultimately started working full-time as a fabricator at a fountain company in the Midwest.
And I didn't like fountain. I didn't get into it, so I got into it because I wanted to learn all the things I could learn from making fountains. So, I worked at this mountain company and I got to do pretty much everything. And what I wanted to do was build machines that could be inserted into the landscape, which is how that's basically what a fountain is.
Seamlessly inserted into the landscape and then you just see the effect of the water. So I wanted to do that not necessarily with the water, but with all the different elements of the water. So I wanted to do that not necessarily with the water, with all the different elements of the water. And then you just see the effect of the water.
So I wanted to do that not necessarily with the water, with all kinds of different mechanisms and ideas for making things move and respond to people in the landscape or people in the site. So from the beginning, your artistic focus had to do with inserting things into a space other than a gallery, other than any kind of sanctioned art area and was more about putting it into a living landscape. Yeah, that's right. I was very rebellious.
I had grown up going to galleries and museums, but I really didn't see my work as being there. I didn't like that you couldn't touch the work and I didn't like it, but it was static primarily. I thought we could do better than just making mobiles and Cal, that kinetic art. Totally.
Absolutely. And so when you came to L.I.D. we took all your teeth. And that was in the 90s, early 90s?
Yeah, late 90s. When I was late 90s. And so how was the culture different in the robotics and maker-ish community coming from San Francisco and how did that parlay into you finding materials and applications? Well, it didn't exist here.
I was shocked. I told you that your teeth are on-site. Well, no. I mean, what happened was you get to the last, when in the late 90s is coming from a very non-commercial scene in San Francisco with these collective groups, where I'm not sure.
And then the collective groups, where everybody just volunteers their time and, you know, Mark Pauline was just racking up his money on purchases on his credit card to build his robotic war machines. And it was much different in Los Angeles. I was shocked not to be able to find anybody who was building anything. And I quickly realized as soon as I started working that that's because there was plenty of work.
You were building weird stuff all day long for commercials or film sets. And that absorbed all your energy and all your time. And by the weekend, I mean, you don't even have a weekend in Los Angeles if you're doing that. But by the time your project was done, your exhaust and the last thing you wanted to do was volunteer time to build someone else's turn.
And you know, I wanted to build someone else's strange machine for no money. So there was no scene. And that was a little bit alienating for me. And I was still resistant to the idea of going to grad school or doing something, you know, art school or finding a community that way.
And that was when I started kicking around the idea for M&A because I knew that the work that I wanted to do was going to require a collaborative effort. I wanted to build things at such a scale that to try to do it on my own would be on nearly impossible unless I wanted to be a Simon Rodea. And just devote my whole life to building several grand towers or something very, very eclectic and focused. And then I wanted to build a new opportunity to create some kind of both community space but also for some more also an exhibition space in a more public avenue.
And that was the driveway of your home. Tell me about the founding of materials applications and the space that it is. Well, I didn't want to live. I'd come from a really well industrial space in San Francisco and I didn't want to live in a domesticated space in LA.
I mean, it would have been completely demoralizing because I already felt like I'd given up my beloved, you know, scrappy robotics community. And I just couldn't imagine living in kind of a dwell groomed environment and not having space where I could be really scrappy and build stuff. And when I saw this building in Silver Lake, it was just down the street. I mean, I was really lazy about it.
It was a place I'd walk by every day. It was really ugly. It was a for sale sign on it for the kid. I'm not getting like six months.
That would not happen now. Absolutely different Silver Lake. For sale on this chain link fence is hideous, hideous building. And yet I didn't like my landlord.
I didn't like paying rent. I felt a little trapped in the job that I had and felt like I was just, you know, working for the man and then giving that money to another man and felt very claustrophobic in that. Yeah. So I kind of, it was 1999 and I just kind of, I don't know, I just became obsessed with purchasing a building.
I had no money. I know what I was. I didn't have, it was not a good time. It was interest rates then were almost 9%.
It was not a good time to be buying real estate and there was no, nobody was even thinking that real estate was a good investment. But I just got obsessed and I just went for it. It took me about another six months before I could actually scrape together. And the house was still there.
I was still there. There were very few. There was no bidding war. I got to know the owner.
It was for sale by owner. And yeah, that's it. I was able to finally purchase the property for not very much. I didn't have a good car appeal.
And so it wasn't too terribly expensive for me. And that allowed you to then create the exhibition space of M&A literally on the sidewalk. So for someone who has never been to Silver Lake, imagine someone walking on the sidewalk and past the past space, describe what they would see. Well back then, you would walk past and it was this stucco building set back from its neighbors to create a deep driveway with a chain link fence and these kind of terrible morose cypress trees flanking one side and a fake edging of Spanish tile on the parapet for plastic.
And so I took that and just took off all of the fake trimmings, took down the cypress trees, planted some black bamboo. And what you see now is a gate system that I designed and a low bench that's flanking the sidewalk to invite people first to sit and then to peer in the gate system in the wall that is taking up the other side of the facing property line that's edging the sidewalk. Have a incision. It's a long window.
It starts in the wall and then continues to the gate so that whether you're walking by, whether you're driving by, you can peer in and see what's going on inside of the courtyard. I like what when you're putting together an exhibitionary space in what is effectively a driveway in a probably one of Los Angeles's more walkable neighborhoods but still one that is probably that still has very strong traffic and still has, and this is on several people of art, which is a very heavily trafficked area. And so you have this kind of balance between the classic LA icon architecture of the roadside image of like the thing you can see from the highway or from the street. It's drive by.
It's drive by a little drive by. But then also one that you if you're walking by, you can actually engage with on a much more human scaled level and go in and peek and exist or just hang out. So describe what kind of exhibitions you started putting on in this area and how it became into this actual organization and business called materials and applications. Let's see.
Let me start. It doesn't happen. It's purely chronological reading. It can be more of just like an impressionistic thing.
But how it how you decided to then use that space consistently as an exhibition area. Well, right away when I purchased the building, I had no idea what I wanted to use that front area for. It was just this. It was concrete from the front door all the way out to the sidewalk.
And for a microsecond, I thought about starting a fountain business there. And then I pictured a whole lot covered in terrible people. I concrete standalone fountain. Is that the technical term in the industry?
The call it PP boys. The P.P. boy from the stage. The people I've been studying.
That's technical term. And I immediately rejected that because I just was not, you know, I like to embrace happiness in my life. Not more feelings of being trapped and confined. And so that's what I really went off of is I just tried to think as big as I could and tried to think what would make me happy and what from this feeling of missing the collaborative culture in San Francisco.
I thought to myself, I'm not, you know, I've never been alone in the way that I feel about stuff. There are always people out there that are feeling the same way that I am and how do I find them in this giant city. So that's what sparked the idea for M&A was just to try to create a beacon that would call in like minded people. I mean, there's community gardens and so if you like to garden, you know where to go.
But if you just like to build stuff when you're not that into weeding or gardening, it's harder to know where to go. So that's the beginning of it. And in extension of my own work, I was still working as an artist on my own, you know, hosting hosting it, hosting something in one's front yard. You can either take the path of, you know, like I mentioned, the Simon O'Dio path of being this eclectic pioneer and doing things all on your own, or you can break open that, break it that open and be much more socially constructive.
And my approach has always been that reality is what we create together. And I believe that we could do that in that space, that it could be a space where things that here to for it only existed in the man in one's imagination and specifically only in especially digital realms could then be realized with the real forces of gravity and the real forces of the weather and the public on them. So when realizing these designs and we'll get to the actual visuals and how that for those listening, like how that may actually appear in a second, but regarding putting together these actual exhibitions and what I would call basically pavilions, these big taking over the driveway space pieces of art and finding using that as a way of finding this community. How did it become kind of a, because it seems to me that a lot of the artists and a lot of the art that you're working with is coming from architecture.
So how did that community kind of fall into place? Right. Well, firstly, I've always resisted the term pavilions, understandable. And it's actually a really new term to describe a little bit of what projects like this are before that they were really environmental installations or large scale architectural follies or large scale constructions.
I think that's the one I usually settle on. Large scale constructions. Okay, we'll take for that in that interview. It's been the interview.
It's been the interview. It's interesting though, because I think it just depending on what you're talking to, if you're talking to an artist, they'll call it installation. If you're talking to an architect, they'll call it pavilion. They won't call it a pavilion.
No one calls it follies anymore. No one calls it follies anymore. Historically, that era. So it's like, it's totally just, it could just be a semantic thing, but we'll call it large scale installations for the source of here.
Well, I'll tell you why. The reason is that I think the term pavilion sells short what the project can become. The goals of any M&A project, most successful projects have not only created a sheltering space for people to hang out in and social activities and program to lectures and screenings and readings and all that good stuff, but also they're testing the limits of new technology or a new material. We don't put our projects in place and then have them there specifically for programmatic goals.
We are actually testing those materials to see how they perform so that the architect or the artist can take that data after they're done and build more iterations and develop from that place, from that large scale prototype, really, a new methodology of building or using a new material in their work. Because it not only has the social function and the social access of people coming by and just engaging with it in unforeseen and spontaneous ways, but also because it's literally just left outside, right? It's like in exposed to the elements on the city streets. So maybe could you reference a few of the projects you've done before and if you have the architects you've worked with in the past?
Sure. So here's what happened is we opened up the space and the way I announced the, or kind of, unveiled this new center for material and technological exploration was by veiling the building, almost like Creason Jean-Claude, but sculpting it a bit more with strategically placed sweeps of fiberglass rot, really sculpted that facade and changed it. So it was concealing and deforming the architecture below it. And that act, I thought, would simply be one that would call out all comers, that people would see that and it would spark their curiosity.
And I really expected artists to respond to that. And I expected fully within the next few years that we'd be building large scale robotic constructions that were quasi architectural, quasi landscape and responsive. And I was shocked when actually it was Marcelo Spina who responded to that and came to me with an idea for a project that he could do with his class. And it was, and I really owe him a debt of gratitude as well as Joe Day for recognizing what I was doing there and seeing how it filled a need, how could fill a need for architects.
And ever since then I've considered myself a friend of all architects because I really understand, I've had architects as clients for nearly a decade before that, but I really began to understand the inside the heart of the most passionate architect is an artist who has ideas that are pushing against the what's conventional. And they do not have an outlet for that beyond competitions or pavilions. And so I was thrilled to host Marcelo Spina and following his project, we had Rob Lay, Francois Perrin, and then in 2005 Benjamin Ball and Gaston Noguez exhibited M&D, the rest is kind of history from there. That was the big breaking point.
And that was the big breaking point, Maximilian Shell, the Golden Vortex. Before that we were operating in obscurity. I was very green and was not sending out press releases. I didn't know the first thing about that.
And I just figured, oh, I'll build it and people will see it and they'll come and we'll put it on the online and we put posters and postcards all over town. But the whole mechanism of the media was very mysterious to me still. Well, so that factors into something I wanted to hear you explain a little bit, especially now that you are effectively relinquishing control of M&A and moving on. That how you started to run it more as a business, because of course, like, you know, we all want to accomplish certain things when we set out to form something like this.
And then how those things get either matured or compromised or however in the process of developing a functioning organization. I'd be interested just to hear how an organization like this functions on a day to day level of having this piece out in the world in the driveway. Maybe just a little bit about how M&A is structured and what kind of business decisions have come along in the way that might have surprised you. Well, M&A is structured very intentionally loosely, not a lot of rigid structures, especially in the beginning.
I was very, I had started M&A as both an experiment in social aesthetics and an institutional critique. So I was not even interested in standard nonprofit models for running the business. I ran it for the first five years, really just volunteer labor. My own labor included everybody that worked on M&A projects was just volunteer.
And then I would just self-fund and the exhibitors would come up with the other hat. We'd pay half, they'd pay half. We did that all the way up through 2005. And my things were riding high in the construction business.
I was doing a lot of fountain work and could pay for the projects that way. And so that was nice because it gave us a lot of flexibility. And we didn't have, we had a small board of directors, but we weren't officially an nonprofit. We were under the umbrella of a larger nonprofit.
It wasn't until the construction industry started to go south and I started to need to actually come up with funds. And the projects started getting bigger and I wanted, we were getting more ambitious. Exhibitors were getting more ambitious. That we became much more structured.
We made our board of directors more official. And to begin the process of getting our own nonprofit status and starting to go after grants on our own. And that changed things because then there's the whole necessity of really tracking. I worked as a project manager, so I was very good at tracking expenses.
I wasn't, I wasn't just a loose, we weren't just kind of charging things on our credit card and not tracking what was going on. We were very good about, we were very good about our business practices, but we weren't organizationally strict or confined. Yeah, that's right. And so then it started to change as we began to go after greater and greater grants.
And that was fine. It didn't at first affect things, but then as far as our programs or the types of projects that we could consider. But I did notice the tendency to need to follow what the grantors were funding. And that I could tell was going to start having an impact on what we would be able to then to exhibit.
I also realized that in order to really run M&A at the level that it deserves, at the level that it's possible for it to be effective and for it to be vital and for it to be as responsive and engaged with communities. We would like it to be. I also realized that I would have to become a much more serious arts administrator and started on that path for a while and learned a huge amount about running nonprofits. And thanks in large part to the Annenberg Foundation and their programs.
We have some wonderful workshops and programs for developing directors and boards of directors. At the end of the day, I'm an artist, not an arts administrator. And in order to have M&A really become everything that I think it can be, I started to realize that I needed to find a successor who was willing to become the more of an arts administrator and really could be critically engaged in the projects, perhaps even at a more academic level, so that they could speak more effectively to potential grantors. I think my passion carries me a great way towards appealing to a broad range of supporters.
But everything you learn when you start out on the path of starting a nonprofit organization, well, the first thing that you learn when you want to start a nonprofit is that you have to get over the idea that you're going to be the director forever. If you want your nonprofit to thrive, you need to get out of the way. You can't do everything. Yeah, no, you can't do anything.
And you probably shouldn't be the director because if you are a director for too long, then it does become this. They say it becomes a cult of personality. And certainly I think as decades fly by, it's more interesting to have new directors come in and have new ideas and fresh perspectives on the mission become implemented. So I mean, it was never meant to be my own vehicle anyway.
We would call ourselves collaborators, but by and large, the architects and artists that came to us, they were, you know, of course, the genius behind the ideas and they were developing ideas and we were there to facilitate that. And of course, regardless of whatever role you have officially, you are still in some ways there because you are living in the home that is directly behind the driveway or is that no longer the case? No, I moved out of M&A a while ago. And in a large part, it was in the process of developing a succession plan.
I realized that I would need to remove myself from the property because, yeah, exactly. The spider. It's always looking out the window and seeing what's going on, like making sure that people are rubbing their feet on the mat before coming into the house and such. That's right.
So now I knew I needed to remove myself even physically from the building. And that's been a great thing because that opens the door now to hosting. It's, you know, it's set up as a residence upstairs. So it's open the door for us to create a residency program for visiting architects and artists.
That's fantastic. I think it's going to be a really strong part of what M&A can be in the future. And you've referred to the ideas at M&A as trying to push whatever is underused in art. And that is something that I lifted off of your website and you may no longer feel about that even in the case.
But can you explain a little bit and what kinds of projects M&A gravitates towards? Sure. Well, yeah, let's lift it off of our mission statement. Underused ideas in art, architecture and technology is what we want to explore through the projects that we create.
That really means a couple of things. In relationship to art, it really is the polite way of the institutional critique of that art does not need to be made by artists, that art does not need to be presented in a white cube to primarily white privileged audiences, that it can be outdoors, unsupervised, uncommodified, and that many different types of people can be artists. And many different types of people can contribute to the process of creating the projects that we do. We still operate on volunteer labor.
And that's not because we need the volunteers in order to realize the projects. I mean, that is primarily how the mission of M&A gets carried out. We're interested in collaborative hands-on projects that share the wealth of knowledge that an architect or an artist brings with them, with the general public. But then it's a reciprocal relationship.
There is a transaction that occurs where the people that are helping to build also bring knowledge and skill sets with them that inform and enhance the project. Because of course, this is in some ways a testing ground of them actually wanting to build these things so they can see how the final product does, change in the space, or get what happens when it's realized. But also the actual building process. That's one of the key focuses of investigation for people who are invested in doing something in the space.
That's right. That's how we all learn together how to build new things. It gives us all new ideas and inspirations for other projects that we can do elsewhere. But also, this idea of raising the water level for everybody in the community to make them more tool-literate is of great importance.
Was there an overwhelming focus on digital technologies when you first started as the main means of construction and design as the main interest of what people were trying to investigate and just kind of tease out? Well, there's definitely a lot of interest. It was 2002 when we first got started and rapid prototyping and parametric design tools were still rather new. And certainly very new to the general public.
And it was something that I felt very strongly. These tools should be, they are tools. It's just like using a skillsaw or a hammer that everybody should have access to these tools and learn them. And you don't necessarily need to be an architect or a designer to be able to use them.
And I think we still have a long ways to go to achieving that goal of making that more accessible, making those tools more accessible. But this was a start. And the big part of that too was taking something like I said that was only existed digitally and exploring what happens when you do apply gravity. It's no longer a beautiful rendering, but when it's actually touchable and such.
That's right. And that was sort of the result of that was that instead of what I thought would be the business model where we would say, oh, we're going to build something out of steel. Let's find an artist or architect who will design something out of steel and we'll go to the Acme Steel Company and they'll sponsor this project and donate all the material. That is usually not how it played out.
Usually the architect or designer came with an idea and they didn't know really what material it could be. And there was a pretty intense, just because when it's parametrically designed, is it lumen? Is it plastic? Is it metal?
Is it sheet? Is it paper? I mean, it could just be so many different things. And that was always an interesting process too.
It was just arriving at what the material could be. Regarding parametric design and how the realization of the designs can really go in any direction once the architect kind of decides how to do it. And what's interesting about that is how it's like also like school, right? Is you actually get to iterate on a larger scale.
You're not just building out a phone core or whatever, but you're actually getting to work hands-on with the materials to realize whatever you put into the, whatever you designed itually previously. And then have this full-scale experimental iteration to deal with and to do research off of. Regarding that research that happens after the thing has been built, does M&A have a methods of that? Or is it more on the directive of the individual designer to kind of decide how those research methods go on after the actual thing has been built?
By and large, it's the individual designer who decides how to monitor their project. Gotcha. Because that as an educational opportunity seems incredibly valuable to me and to what we see people on our connect being frustrated with and the standards of architectural education now is that there's still this, which you think we'd have figured out by now, but still this incredible rift between what you're allowed and encouraged to do in school and what you can actually do as soon as you're out of it. So anything that helps bridge that gap is incredibly valuable.
Absolutely. Well, in the ideal, I mean, I had all these lofty ideas for M&A in the beginning, which included that we would do the materials monitoring and have this database of kind of a day-by-day images and descriptions of how the material is fairing and connection techniques and that sort of thing. But we just really didn't have the resources to maintain that type of database. Even there was the idea of having a materials library where we would have not only materials that have been used in M&A exhibits, but things that had been considered, all the samples that we had received and cataloging those.
Some of these things have been taken up by other organizations and some of them we still would love to implement. But yeah, there's a lot of educational opportunities. I mean, that's actually how our workshop series, the MatterApp series got started, was when we realized that there was so much richness in the experience of developing the exhibit. And that was where we wanted, we decided, well, we're bringing people in to collaborate with, or to collaborate and to assist with the building of these projects once all the fun stuff is over.
Let's bring them in earlier on and have them workshop with the architects and bring in engineers that are working on the project and have them explain the principles that they're working with and then have workshops around these problems that we're solving. And that was a really big breakthrough for us. Oliver House has helped to identify and implement in his MatterApp series. So now that you're kind of moving a little bit away from the organization, what is the new direction you're hoping to chart in your own career?
Well, you know, all this time I've been juggling three careers. I've had my art career, I've been directing the nonprofit, and I've been floating the whole boat primarily with fountain and water-related projects, design projects by merely in some project management. And so for me, the first step was turning off the fountain website. I was pulling the plug, but turning it off.
I just turned it off the fountain website. That was about two years ago. And I still get to this. Oh my gosh, that felt great.
Because I didn't get into fountains out of any kind of love or fountains. It was really just a way to learn that tool set. And then the crazy thing is, once you begin designing and engineering fountains, people find out about that and they chase you. You become that fountain person.
Yeah, even that fountain person. So I was that fountain person for so long. And so it was really, really nice to turn that off. So that was step one.
And the next step was putting together a succession plan with the board of directors at M&A. We found Gia Gu, who's the new director and Courtney Kaufman, who is the development director. And they are doing a bang-up job already of chasing down grants and programming and putting together some really interesting new directions. So it's really exciting to see it with a fresh wind on earth, so to speak.
And then all along, I've had an art practice that's kind of waxed and waned depending on the demands of the other two businesses. And that's where I really want to devote my energies now. And it's funny how, I mean, it's almost like a B-movie how my life seems to just respond to the most typical of scenarios. As soon as the vacuum was created of me turning off the fountain website and stepping away from M&A, now there are commissions coming in.
And it's weird. I remember I used to have so much anxiety about the changing direction in life that I would cast afloat and not have any options. And I really think that that's one of the things that holds so many people back, because they're terrified of letting go of their paycheck or terrified of letting go of the stability that what they've been doing for so long has given them. And every time I let go, I find that it's okay, that the passion that I'm pursuing, it has an outlet and that there is a responsive audience.
And you've also had, which for some reason haven't been able to address yet, but urban applications. Right. Which is, do you count that as a whole other side business? Or is this something that is more of a natural growth out of materials and applications?
Urban applications was in direct response to the urge to want to take the projects that we're doing at M&A and push them out into the public realm even more, push them into places where they would be needed necessary. But that was going to entail really changing the entire way that M&A puts out calls for proposals. We embarked on a mapping. The first thing we did was we worked with the City Planning Department and we got a KMZ map that could be plugged into Google and show us where all the vacant lots were within a two-mile radius of M&A in Silver Lake.
And they were color coded if they were industrial, commercial, or residential. And we began to go around and identify potential sites so that the scenario would be, okay, well, find the site, find the owner and community that surrounds that site, take a poll of what they would like to see there, then put out the call, then build a M&A with the help of that community, and get all the kinks and bugs out of it. And then once it's been tested, tried and true, then relocated to the new site. And that was going to be kind of the new, that's what urban applications was going to be able to kind of manage and direct.
A really direct, it's lovely how the name really just explains it. It's like you take whatever you're doing at materials and applications and then it's certain, in this case, the two-mile radius of the urban space and put it in there. And I've seen before there were a few projects of like responsive maps within certain areas of being, what is the term that you called in these like kind of podiums? Is there a particular name for them?
Oh, they were almost like, are you talking about, they've come to be called totems because of the location. Which is very, I don't know if you'd endorse that term or not, but it seems very like serious. Yeah, no, they're serious. So that was the fantasy models what I described.
What actually happened was, it took us two years to develop that strategy and then of course the spaces that we wanted to use were owned by people that didn't want to talk to us. And no matter how many brochures or elevator pitches or whatever we tried, they were not interested in developing, using their property for this opportunity that we were presenting to them. So Plan B became fine. I still think this is the way to do any kind of community engaged project is you find an organization that's already on the ground making things happen with a community, with the full buy-in of a community.
And the full participation of a community and then go to them and ask them how you can help and show them what you can do and let them tell you what they want and how you think, how they think you can help. And that's what we did with the Council for Watershed Health on their Paseo project. And that was a very successful collaboration because we were able to fill a need in that community and fully engaged with that community and the design process as well as the installation of the piece along that large watershed infiltration alleyway that the Council for Watershed Health had developed. So since the past, I guess, 13 years or so since the beginning of 2000s, we started materials applications and how that business doesn't run out of the transition space, period of domestic and the streetscape and now having this urban applications further outreaching more embedded in the surrounding urban space.
Can you describe to me how your relationship with the city and this can be so really particular as your home base, how that's changed in the course of running these organizations and doing these kinds of projects? Well, I used to enjoy anonymity. And I enjoyed being invisible and just having the actions speak for themselves and we were operating in relative obscurity except for ARPIN Act to following what we were doing in some various... Outing you to the World Wide Web as well.
That's right, but really to a pretty niche audience. And now M&A is, you know, I mean, that's the irony of M&A starting out as an institutional critique because now M&A is an institution and people keep telling me that and I've gotten over it. But, you know, as a result, I really needed to begin acting that way than I was the director of an institution. And that's fine.
I mean, I think everybody should grow up and behave that way one day. It's good to be engaged in a community in a very direct, straightforward, transparent way. But the roots were trying to be a little bit more like the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I was kind of hoping I could just be the little wizard behind the curtain and not have to come out and show myself.
But I think that's primarily how things have changed. So we're like people know me there and know of M&A. And certainly in the city of Los Angeles, I've found the city of Los Angeles in the various departments and really great allies. Everything from the top down from our city's office and the great streets program to the Bureau of Engineering to street services and various council districts.
And very supportive in the county. LA County has been very supportive. The Board of Supervisors have recognized some of the work that we've done. And so that's been wonderful.
It's been wonderful to engage in the civic life of Los Angeles and feel that we are having an influence, even beyond our own programs, but in just changing the way that people see the space around them and see the city around them. And that we're participating in a greater movement. And it didn't start with us. Of course, but I think I was caught up in the greater ideas of the time.
And that's partly why M&A is called that materials and applications. I wanted to leave it vague enough so that it could continue to grow and respond to the needs of the city and the community. Well, I'm very excited to see what happens next and how it continues to grow at whatever distance you keep from it and to see what else you come up to in your development of your heart. So thanks, Jenna.
Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Amelia. It's been fun. Thanks for listening to our one-to-one interview with Jenna Didier.
Donnie Lo Voynoff edits the podcast and Matt Scaling is composed of music. Myself and Paul Petruña are the producers of one-to-one. You can learn more about this week's interview in our show notes and listen to new episodes every Monday. As a reminder, we are a separate podcast from our Connect Sessions, our weekly news podcast.
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