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I had a chance last week to walk inside the crooked house installed atop the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. The 70,000-pound house is a sculpture by Do Ho Suh, called “Fallen Star.” Hundreds of people stopped by Thursday for a dizzying step inside the 18th installment in the university’s Stuart Collection of art.
Suh moved to the United States from Korea about 20 years ago and has made artwork exploring ideas of home, adjustment and cultural displacement for much of his career. The Stuart Collection’s director, Mary Beebe, has said this piece fits a university campus especially well since so many students leave home to study there.
One of my favorite touches inside the fully furnished and landscaped home was the photographs hanging on the walls and the mantle, including baby photos of Beebe, the deans of the engineering school and Irwin Jacobs, the co-founder of Qualcomm and the man the engineering school is named for.
You can see more photographs from outside and inside the home here.
We went to the campus when the house was hoisted atop the building in November. View our photo gallery and read about the particular engineering that went in to making such a crooked house possible.
As we learned with our friends at NBC 7 San Diego: Construction supervisor Don Franken had to give his workers a pep talk before they came on the wacky job site:
View more videos at: http://nbcsandiego.com.
I’m Kelly Bennett, reporter for Voice of San Diego. You can reach me directly at kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0531.
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