For Suh, who moved to the U.S. to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, followed by graduate studies at Yale, the installation references his feelings of displacement, both domestic and cultural.
"When you see a fallen star, it means that it fell from the sky from a different universe," the artist explained to me last year in an interview. "It's something that's very out of context."
For many of us, college means being away from where we grew up for the first time, an unfamiliar and sometimes overwhelming experience that really challenges the notion of home. Obviously, it's not just where we sleep at night. I think Suh's piece will resonate with students, and with anyone who has ever felt as out of place as this little house that's perched like it was dropped by a passing cargo plane.
"Fallen Star" took a team of engineers and other experts several years to plan and construct. Suh based the look of the fully furnished house on the architecture he saw in New England. It's even beautifully landscaped. Though the up-tilted floor and seemingly precipitous overhang might deter the faint of heart, it's totally safe. There's a welcome mat for the general public on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., when docents provide guided tours. And, of course, you can see the house from all over campus.
More: Do Ho Suh
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(Images: Philipp Scholz Rittermann)
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love it! i live in oc but cant wait to get back to san diego!
This reminds me of the Prada Marfa art installation in Marfa Texas — a non-functioning “Prada” store on a deserted West Texas highway. Another utterly unexpected building, in the least likely place imaginable.
If I could just move in right now I'd be petty content
pretty freaking awesome.
It's very cool, but not so much when your school is BROKE and spending tons of money on art installations when the school is decaying seems... slightly frivolous.
I like the 'garden' but my first thought is how scary it would be to live there especially since California is earthquake (I'm a Californian) country but I doubt it was built to live in
@Amy: I believe the Stuart Collection is funded by private donations.
It could be, but I've been giving a lot of thought recently to the abundance of nicely designed new construction on campus, and thinking about how much the money would have been better spent... I know most of it was likely earmarked for such new buildings, but it seems almost criminal to fire so much of the essential staff while the university is expanding...
Ok, off my soap box now :)
It makes me think of the Wizard of Oz more than anything.
@Amy, I get where you're coming from because I see similar issues in my alma mater. The football program gets millions while the roads are riddled with potholes, the campus security seems understaffed, and the school isn't bulking up its library collection or technology labs. It seems like a poor allocation of resources - but things get funded for different reasons, and I've learned to accept it. Perhaps a wealthy individual may see to it that their donations go to the educational departments rather than for a fancy new football clubhouse.
But really, Amy, they don't have to spend the money how you want them to. It's a shame that there aren't private donors funding staff positions, but that's life. If a donor specifically says "this money is for new buildings," then it really unfortunately really doesn't matter where you think the money should go.
From a slightly different angle, you can go into an expensive restaurant and decide it's criminal that people are spending so much money on gourmet food when there are others starving in the next street, but you still don't get to tell other people how to spend their money. It's the same thing here. You can have an idea of where the private funding *should* go, but you don't get to tell the donors how to earmark their donations.
@KimberlyRose - Agreed. In fact, if one is that upset about the way money is spent, one could appeal to the donors themselves, rather than the institution, which might not have any say.
I have such mixed feelings about projects like this. It's fantastic, beautifully executed, original, daring...and yet in the end it's no more than a sort of visual joke. A Ripley's Believe-it-or-not gimmick.
Abut the funding: I live near a public university and every time there is a privately funded project people come out of the woodwork complaining that the money would be better spent on...well, them, usually. That argument is a dead end.
I love this artist. I love 'floor' and 'some/one'. He is awesome.
@Kimberly I know, there's no way to re-appropriate money that has been designated for use in these kinds of projects, and we do have some very generous donors on this campus. The owners of Qualcomm, for instance, have donated vast amounts of money to both UCSD and San Diego in general. The improvements to the engineering school here due to their generosity is outstanding.
That said, it still sucks, and it's mostly due to the economic state of California than anything else.
You can get near it, but you can't get inside, though. :o(((
I have an idea. Spend the same money and build a large, beautiful, fully furnished, landscaped house and put it on a corner of land the University owns. Then pay a small staff good living wages with benefits to run an emergency day care center for children of employees and students. Then name it after the artist and celebrate the Art of caring for each other.
Spend tens of thousands of dollars, to build a pretty little house, perched on a 6-7 floor building, hanging over walkways.....
In an earthquake fault zone.
What will they call it after a 6.0 or above hits the area? "Felled Star"?
Sorry, couldn't resist....