Julia Christensen is a new media artist who began investigating How Communities are Re-Using the Big Box
in winter of 2003. Since the spring of 2004, she has traveled over 75,000 miles around the country in her car,
visiting the sites and meeting the people who are transforming empty Wal-Mart buildings, K-Mart buildings,
Home Depot buildings and more into useful structures for their community. She has been collecting a growing
collection of photographs, interviews, stories, and documents relating to the renovations, and has been
giving presentations in communities about how towns are dealing with this common situation.
She continues to travel around the country, visiting towns and giving lectures about the reuse of big box
buildings in the United States. Julia is also exhibiting photography and installing video/sound/new media
work from field recordings collected throughout her travels.
Her book, Big Box Reuse, will be published by MIT Press in November of 2008.