Since the spring of 2020, Maryam Eskandari has been conducting year-long studios out on the Dangermond Preserve with her students. Working closely with TNC staff and scientific researchers, one thing that they have concluded has been that although both the Vandenberg Space Force Base (now occasionally used to launch Space X rockets) and the remanence of the Army Bunkers from WWII seem to have fallen into deep sleep, their “dusts” and air pollution from flight paths, vibration of rocket launches and Anthropocene activities such as surfing, are very well alive and have an implicit impact on the habitat, which is home to over 700 plants and animal species and major marine reserves such as gorgonian corals, seals, the great gray whales, and kelp forests.

Maryam Eskandari is a designer (architect) and an educator. In 2013, she founded MIIM Designs, a practice dedicated to community engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration and design innovation through the use of local and traditional materials. Under her leadership, MIIM has been a two- time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Doris Duke Foundation Award, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Library and Museums. Maryam is the 2009-2011 recipient of the Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture Award. In 2014 Maryam was a recipient for the Women Entrepreneur Award at the White House under President Barack Obama; the recipient of the 2016 Cambridge Judge Business School Rothschild Prize, and the recipient of the 2005 J. Douglas Mac Neil Architecture Memorial Prize.

Maryam received her master’s from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) School of Architecture and Planning, while doing extensive work on restoration and heritage preservation on Homayoun’s’ Tomb in India and researching in history and theory on mosques.

Maryam was the founding Board of Open Architecture Collaborative – a non-profit working in underserved communities and the Harvard Iranian Alumni Association, and currently a Board member of Harvard’s FDR Foundation, CleanAcwa in Accra Ghana, and the 1947 Partition Archives of India. She has taught at Boston Architectural College (BAC), Harvard University, and is the Nature’s Conservancy (TNC) Capstone Thesis Professor at Cal Poly (Pomona).