Light Gauge is a new, site-specific installation for the M&A x Craft Contemporary courtyard that will be constructed during the summer of 2025. The project investigates themes surrounding energy and infrastructure in Los Angeles, testing the policies, technologies, and architectural forms that enable self-determination. Two fundamental questions motivate the installation. First, how can the economic values and power structures surrounding energy production and distribution in Los Angeles, a city of nearly four-million residents, be reformulated? Second, by what means can a temporary installation provide energy autonomy at the community level, and how might an architectural intervention scale up to serve as a model for the larger city? Light Gauge responds to these pressing urban questions by means of a photovoltaic energy installation. The project provides shade for zones of collective occupation while generating all power required for public programming, supporting a public community space of performance, encounter, and cooling.

Departamento del Distrito is a design and research practice based in Mexico City, Mexico. Founded in 2017 by Francisco Quiñones and Nathan Friedman, the office specializes in public, residential, and curatorial projects. The work of Departamento del Distrito is guided by the following core principles: binational representation of language, culture, and history specific to Mexico and the United States; an expanded view of architecture that considers the many social, political, and technological relationships between people and things; and the design of futures that are alternative and diverse. Projects by Departamento del Distrito have been exhibited internationally, including shows at the National Building Museum (Washington, DC); Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam); arc en rêve (Bordeaux); Museo Numismático Nacional (Mexico City); Whitehouse (Tokyo); and the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. In 2022, the practice received the Architectural League of New York Prize.

Nathan Friedman is cofounder of Departamento del Distrito and a professor in the practice at the Rice University School of Architecture. His writing has been published in Log, Art Journal, Scapegoat, and Manifest. Friedman holds a master’s degree from the department of History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BArch from Cornell University.

Francisco Quiñones is cofounder of Departamento del Distrito and adjunct professor of architecture at Universidad Iberoamericana. His research on the evolution of midcentury modernism in Mexico has been published in the series En-Medio, supported by the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA), and in Columbia University’s Avery Review. Quiñones holds an MArch II from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a BArch from Universidad Anáhuac.