Centering Center:  

A Pop-up at Descanso Gardens

In 2021-2022, the Centering Center collaborated with the architecture students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and their professors Thomas Fowler and Kevin Dong, to create designs bringing structure and imagination to the centering concept.  The students designed and built a full-scale prototype, a dome focused on the "social" quadrant.  The dome made its debut at Descanso Gardens in June 2022 as part of their Tonalism (in space) Exhibit, produced by Dublab.

.

Artist-led workshops brought the Center's social quadrant to life.

• Tina Calderon shared stories and songs with guests, speaking about the revival of the Tongva language and the fluidity of culture which is integrally connected to language and place.
• Marcos Lutyens led a guided meditation exploring internal, sensory, social and environmental realms as they relate to the inner self and to the intent of the Centering Center Pavilion
• Yi-Ping Hou selected 64 different plant species and critters within the habitat of Descanso Gardens and wove them into a divinatory cosmology based on the 64 hexagrams of the I-Ching, an ancient Chinese oracular system.  Yi-Ping asked visitors to join her in throwing coins which pointed to one of the 64 notational drawings, revealing an aspect of the visitor's relation to the park as well as to their inner selves.