ExtraTerraceTrill: An off-grid development founded by Huntrezz Janos in Los Angeles. Built to generate sustainable arts community and infrastructures. (Currently under construction)
An off-grid urban solarpunk residence utilizing regenerative technologies such as atmospheric water generation, composting, gardening, solar power, and adobe earthbag construction. What started as just a shed on a hill is quickly growing into a space for community and radical self-reliance for queer and Black artists.
Inspired by the traditional siheyuan courtyard style and centrally located in Los Angeles, this space is beginning to become the cultural springboard for many future artistic and technological endeavors. Constructed by hand by Huntrezz Janos, this project represents both an architectural and personal challenge for the multimedia artist, showcasing her capabilities across diverse practices.
Currently serving as a residency space for Huntrezz Janos and Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou, who utilize it as a micro studio and garden center. This sustainable infrastructure prototype demonstrates innovative approaches to urban off-grid living, community building, and environmental stewardship in the heart of one of America's largest cities.
The project embodies principles of radical self-sufficiency, environmental regeneration, and community care, creating a model for sustainable artist housing and collaborative creative spaces that prioritize accessibility, sustainability, and cultural equity.
Presentations & Exhibitions
Maya Livio, recipient of the 2024 SOM Foundation Researcher-in-Residence, led a conversation with Huntrezz Janos and writer Emma Kemp exploring artist-led land use projects in Los Angeles. The discussion, held at the historic Schindler House, surveyed the challenges and possibilities that artist-led land use projects can surface, placing ExtraTerraceTrill into dialogue with other innovative approaches to shared livability and multispecies cohabitation.
As part of the Caltech-Huntington Program in Visual Culture, Huntrezz Janos presented ExtraTerraceTrill alongside Alex Nathanson (founder of Solar Power for Artists). The talk examined the growing movement of artists experimenting with solar power and environmentally-informed methods in creative practice. Janos presented ExtraTerraceTrill as an off-grid infrastructure project using atmospheric water generation, solar panels, and other eco-technologies to support a BIPOC, queer, and artist community.
ExtraTerraceTrill was featured at LACE's gallery on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as part of PARABLE 003, an exhibition of Black visual and conceptual contemporary art rooted in the liberatory possibilities of Black community, settlement, and creative expression. Curated by Alex Jones and Kevin Bernard Moultrie-Daye, the exhibition was part ode and part elegy to Octavia Butler's unfinished Parable trilogy, investigating the vanishing point of an idea as a blueprint for the near future of Black sovereignty.
At the PARABLE 003 exhibition, Huntrezz Janos installed a three-channel video projection describing her vision for ExtraTerraceTrill using video and 3D graphics animation—from the problem scope of the housing crisis to the myriad solution space of sci-fi solarpunk and Star Trek-inspired community enabling technologies. The projections were made onto matte semi-transparent panels which hung from the ceiling on clear lines to create a holographic three-dimensional installation, embodying the exhibition's exploration of Black futurity and experimental living.
Featured alongside artists Kenturah Davis, Alima Lee, Josiah Mackey, Chris Martin, Umar Rashid, Boima Tucker, Hana Ward, and Andrew Wilson, the exhibition incorporated visual, material, and cultural aspects of a new free Black state through video, sculpture, textile, sound, and digital media, where California's histories of migration, radical participation, and experimental living converged into a foundation for the future of Blackness.
