A NEW ANGLE

“I built bigger and bigger sculptures--until you could finally live in them,” says conceptual artist Michael Jantzen, whose latest project, a structure called the “M-House,” stands on a hill overlooking the Tejon Ranch near Gorman. Jantzen designed the steel-and-cement house as a prototype for a vacation retreat, a place to escape from the conventional.

The Los Angeles artist, whose work is featured in a restrospective at Cal State Fullerton’s Atrium Gallery through Sept. 10, has been experimenting with housing since 1969. In 1974, he built a 650-square-foot solar-powered vacation retreat out of the steel tops of grain silos, arched barn beams and corrugated metal. Three years ago, he conceived a Malibu beach house that featured a facade of television screens projecting images and sounds of the ocean--an ironic twist on the fact that the houses block anyone on the Pacific Coast Highway from seeing the ocean. And “if it’s overcast you might play back an earlier recording of a sunny day,” says the artist.

Just as he was finishing the Malibu project, Jantzen left Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, where he taught environmental and product design, to build the first of his “modular, transportable, environmentally responsive, high-tech ‘M-vironments.’ ” To be closer to the building site, he moved to Valencia with his wife, artist Ellen Jantzen. Working on a tight budget, Jantzen fabricated the parts in his garage, then hauled the steel beams and concrete panels in his truck up the winding dirt road to the wind-swept 20-acre parcel. Twenty-thousand miles and 500-plus trips later, Jantzen admits, “I never should have built it myself-- but I’m sort of crazy that way.” The M-house is composed of a grid of interconnected rectangular cube frames made from square steel tubing on which concrete composite panels may be hung horizontally or vertically. Some fold out to provide shade over an exterior deck while others fold in to form furniture, such as tables or a bench. The house stays cool in summer and warm in winter with insulated panels. According to Jantzen, the hinged panels may be fabricated in any number of shapes, sizes and materials and with or without windows and doors. “All you have to do is take a few bolts out and fold them a different way to reconfigure the space--you need a wrench and a screwdriver.” Jantzen calls the house a “land-yacht” because of its compact size--the 1,000 square feet include both interior living space and exterior deck--and built-in furnishings. A small galley kitchen can be sealed off from the main sleeping area with a sliding storage unit that doubles as a staircase leading to a second-floor guest loft. The main room features a built-in bed and desk, each mounted on wheels, that can be rolled onto the deck for outside sleeping or working. The artist painted both the interior and exterior the color of the sage growing on the hillside. “It’s all about exploring color and making people feel they are part of the structure,” says Jantzen. “Because everything is green, like the landscape, you become more aware of the shape of the structure.”

He dreams of someday building an entire community of the houses, but for now he sees them functioning as guest houses, offices or party rooms, especially for the environmentally sensitive. Although the house can be connected to utilities when complete, it’s designed for living “off grid.” Jantzen envisions a separate pod with photovoltaic cells and a small wind generator for supplying energy, a large water tank for water storage, propane gas tanks to fuel a cookstove and a back-up heating system. The artist-designer plans to install a shower with a high-pressure low-flow nozzle to conserve water but hasn’t decided between a compost or electric toilet. “The electric toilet turns the waste into a fine ash you can sprinkle on your garden later,” says Jantzen, “but it uses more energy.” Incorporating interactive media into his structures is another Jantzen trademark. The M-House will feature video “windows” with cameras trained on the outside scenery. “They will play the environment back to you,” he says in describing an elaborate system of sensors that will randomly register temperature, wind speed and barometric pressure, then feed signals into the computer to alter an image’s color and sounds. One monitor on an outdoor deck currently features an extraterrestrial-looking purple mountain and red sky. “It’s that one right over there, see?” says Jantzen, pointing to a peak on the horizon. “I don’t want technology to just turn our lights on and off. I want it to bring us closer to our environment, to raise our consciousness. I’d like it to be part of the fun of living.”

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What Inspires Michael Jantzen:

* The Blur Building on Lake Neufchatel, Switzerland.

* Japanese architect Toyo Ito’s Silver Hut.

* Conceptual artist Rebecca Horn’s kinetic art.

* Juno Reactor’s electronic/techno-music CD “Beyond the Infinite.”

* Flash, L’Arca and Domus magazines.

* Eric Drexler’s seminal nanotechnology book--”Engines of Creation.”

* Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”