Oscar Tuazon is a California-based artist working in architecture, installation, and sustainability. His Water School exhibition (MSU Broad Museum, 2019) placed Steve Baer explicitly at the origin of his practice — making Tuazon one of the clearest documented cases of Baer's influence on contemporary art and architecture.
Water School (MSU Broad Museum, through August 26, 2019) brought together a cross-section of Tuazon's experimental architectural works. Companion schools were created in California and Minnesota (both sites of water crises — drought and the Dakota Access Pipeline, respectively). The schools create space for sustainability discussions.
Tuazon's work has appeared at Chicago MCA, the Whitney, Centre Georges Pompidou, Art Basel, and the Venice Biennale.
Zome Alloy (2016) is the centerpiece: a full-scale plywood prototype of interconnected rooms "inspired by Baer's signature polygonal 'Zome Home.'" The article credits the term "Zome Home" to Steve Durkee. Originally shown at Art Basel 2016 (complete structure); three rooms were shown at MSU Broad with the remaining rooms at the California and Minnesota schools.
The rooms contain a library selected by Tuazon from the MSU collection, ranging across art, architecture, science, and activism. The space hosted read-ins, write-ins, and speak-ins during the exhibition.
Tuazon's Curtain Wall (2013, collection: The Brant Foundation): two large panes of glass in a frame; functions as a window by day; at night the cavity between the panes fills with polystyrene beads for insulation. This is functionally a Beadwall — Dave Harrison's Zomeworks system that does exactly this, patented in the 1970s. The article does not name Beadwall or Harrison.
A room in the exhibition showed "ephemera and publications produced by the first-generation environmentalists (Steve Baer, Buckminster Fuller, and Stewart Brand) which inspired Tuazon's own work." Baer's Dome Cookbook is listed first among these writings.
The article describes Baer as "the next generation" relative to Fuller, and Tuazon as "the next generation" relative to Baer — placing the lineage as Fuller → Baer → Tuazon.