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Google Gradient Canopy
Mountain View, CA | 18 acres
Role: Curation and Experience Design

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Team: SPMD
Project Management: Ashley Hetrick, Michelle Boyton, Chloe Grey,  Joanna James, Jenny Jenkins, Creative Direction: Sean Madden, Louise Mackie, Design Direction: Jean Colangelo, Experience Design: Stacie Cassutt, Lindsey Shive, Bridget Moore, Binh Ngyuen, Madeline Wilson, Zach Schmidt, Phoebe Han, Lydia Montgomer, Engineering: Carl Burdick, Kelly Numamoto, Matthew Avery, Sam Dizenfeld, Mural Ops: Michael Pacarar, Michael De La Riva

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Gradient Canopy is one of the first times Google led the concept and construction of its own campus. Our team led the experience design, curation, and fabrication of the art and design collection feauring over 30 local artist commissions.

The collection embodies Google’s priority for sustainability and biodiversity, featuring artists and activists who integrate nature into their work. My role included experience design, research, curation, briefing, writing accessible interpretive text and exhibition copy, and design for the physical signage and a digital experience.

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Throughout the briefing, I conducted studio visits to document the artist’s process and intention. This work included the direction and interview for a brief documentary featuring Haoyun Erin Zhao.

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The Foothills Biome

Featuring Nicole Mueller, In the Valley, Acrylic on canvas, 9 × 19 feet, 2023,Nicole Mueller is a visual artist and painter based in San Francisco. For the project, Mueller painted two large-scale canvases inspired by the California redwoods and foothills, to be positioned at opposite ends of the building, encouraging visitors to traverse the series.


As apart of the experience design, our team established courtyards defined by California Nature. In the Poppy Point collaboration, I designed a floral mural that travelled through the space and onto the wall emerging into 3D-printed poppies.


Featuring Carolynn Haydu,Classically trained in drawing and painting, Haydu ultimately fell in love with the paper substrate on which she was mark-making. Haydu’s unique works reflect the ecstatic energies she experiences in the open spaces of her California home, as well as the repeating patterns that occur naturally in everything from waves to rock formations. Her finished works evoke the energetic topographies of the outdoor spaces she holds dear. For Gradient Canopy, Carolynn worked with our team to fabricate her layers in CNC-cut wooden canvases for her to apply her techniques.

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The Ocean Biome

Featuring Jenny Sharaf


Featuring Erin Zhao, Oceanic Calligraphy (Triptych), 120x252 in / 305x639 cm, Acrylic on canvas,Born in China and relocating to the United States at seventeen, Haoyun Erin Zhao established her multidisciplinary practice in San Francisco, primarily working in painting, printmaking, and installation. For Gradient Canopy, Erin painted two large-format dyptychs, titled Melodic Bay and Oceanic Caligraphy, to be positioned at opposite ends of the building, drawing visitors through the building to see work inspired by different regional biomes.


Featuring Chieko Shimizu Fujioka, SHIONARI, Acrylic, glass on wood

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The Redwood Biome

Featuring Alexandra Cicorschi, Redwood, 63 x 70 inches, Salvaged wood (Douglas fir, oak, cedar, mahogany, walnut, redwood, maple, pine, teak, ash), dyed maple veneer and oil on wood panel


The Verdant Valley courtyard included colored chain and gradient floor graphics to mimic the color of light passing through the redwood forest.


In the Clover Camp courtyard, I curated a scavenger hunt of California Campgrounds, natural history, and playful local easter eggs.

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The Bay Biome

Featuring Rachelle Reichert


Featuring Aili Schmeltz


Featuring Dana Hemenway
Dana Hemenway is an artist based in San Francisco. Her work is rooted in the excavation and elevation of utilitarian objects to make visible what has become habituated in our built environments. Hemenway uses these functional items as materials to form traditionally fiber-based crafts–lights and cords are woven through ceramics or the gallery wall, extension cords are transformed into macramé chains. Her light installation follows the estuary environments near the Gradient Canopy project site.


Featuring Favianna Rodriguez Giannoni
Favianna Rodriguez Giannoni is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and entrepreneur based in Oakland, California. Her art and praxis address migration, gender justice, climate change, racial equity, and sexual freedom. For the project, Favianna and the SPMD team translated her paper collage techniques into a large-scale wheatpaste application celebrating the bay.

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