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73 Blue Heron Way’s precarious perch
UCSD art installation catches a feeling on campus
Artist Do Ho Suh’s anxiety-producing house, atop Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD.
Which building at UCSD is the more iconic: the ziggurated Geisel library or the Falling House? The question occurs as I emerge from the elevator on the library’s sixth floor, turn right and right again, look out the window, and come face to face with — ta-daah! — 72 Blue Heron Way, aka the precarious house of Do Ho Suh, South Korean artist — and star, some would say, of this campus’s Stuart art collection. Except that’s not how it hits me from the sixth floor of the Geisel. Do Ho Suh’s house sits precariously on the rooftop corner of nearby Jacobs Hall — the engineering school, natch. At first, I’m horrified. Is that house-in-the-sky about to topple?
The lady studying at the corner desk pats my arm. “Don’t worry. It’s an art installation,” she says, even though the little blue house really does look like it’s ready to commit suicide off the edge of that engineering school building. I realize what a great, simple idea that is: to shake up your sense of how things should be. The crazy angle. The bungalow sticking out into space. Do Ho Suh’s thing is exactly what a lot of people — even people who have been born here — feel uneasy about. Not just instability, but also the separateness he’s trying to tell us we’ve built into everything. Separation by freeway, separation by gated communities, separation by giving ourselves too much space. This is the special crime of the UCSD planners, and even though I love this spaciousness here on campus, I agree that the separation is too much. It just keeps people apart. No wonder loneliness is a huge factor among undergrads — and not just overseas students who, like Do Ho Suh, feel the sudden rip from home. It reminds me of an old Jacques Tati movie I have always loved, Mon Oncle. In the film, there’s the successful brother who lives in the New Paris — clattery, technological, neat, cold, lonely — and then the other, “unsuccessful “brother who lives in the old part, where things are messy, crowded, inefficient, and alive, and where people actually depend on and love each other.
Pretty, but library space bang for your buck? And ground floor, anybody?
This campus is not as bad as New Paris, but many complain it’s too stretched out for human-sized sociability. Too chopped up into separate blocks to encourage spontaneous human interaction.
So while the Geisel does provide a marvelous vision of futurity for UCSD — even now, a half century after it went up — Do Ho Suh’s weird little house falling from heaven is perhaps more honest about our weird life right now.
Do Ho Suh felt untethered from his homeland. This is how he expressed it. I suspect it’s the way lots of students feel. Looming outside the comforts of this little pretend home, to quote Wikipedia, you get “the unsettling impersonal nature of a large academic institution.” Whatever, you gotta see it. Do Ho Suh’s house is open for on-the-spot inspections Wednesdays and Thursdays. Take an elevator up the Jacobs building.
Here's something you might be interested in.
73 Blue Heron Way’s precarious perch
UCSD art installation catches a feeling on campus
73 Blue Heron Way’s precarious perch
UCSD art installation catches a feeling on campus
Artist Do Ho Suh’s anxiety-producing house, atop Jacobs School of Engineering, UCSD.
Which building at UCSD is the more iconic: the ziggurated Geisel library or the Falling House? The question occurs as I emerge from the elevator on the library’s sixth floor, turn right and right again, look out the window, and come face to face with — ta-daah! — 72 Blue Heron Way, aka the precarious house of Do Ho Suh, South Korean artist — and star, some would say, of this campus’s Stuart art collection. Except that’s not how it hits me from the sixth floor of the Geisel. Do Ho Suh’s house sits precariously on the rooftop corner of nearby Jacobs Hall — the engineering school, natch. At first, I’m horrified. Is that house-in-the-sky about to topple?
The lady studying at the corner desk pats my arm. “Don’t worry. It’s an art installation,” she says, even though the little blue house really does look like it’s ready to commit suicide off the edge of that engineering school building. I realize what a great, simple idea that is: to shake up your sense of how things should be. The crazy angle. The bungalow sticking out into space. Do Ho Suh’s thing is exactly what a lot of people — even people who have been born here — feel uneasy about. Not just instability, but also the separateness he’s trying to tell us we’ve built into everything. Separation by freeway, separation by gated communities, separation by giving ourselves too much space. This is the special crime of the UCSD planners, and even though I love this spaciousness here on campus, I agree that the separation is too much. It just keeps people apart. No wonder loneliness is a huge factor among undergrads — and not just overseas students who, like Do Ho Suh, feel the sudden rip from home. It reminds me of an old Jacques Tati movie I have always loved, Mon Oncle. In the film, there’s the successful brother who lives in the New Paris — clattery, technological, neat, cold, lonely — and then the other, “unsuccessful “brother who lives in the old part, where things are messy, crowded, inefficient, and alive, and where people actually depend on and love each other.
Pretty, but library space bang for your buck? And ground floor, anybody?
This campus is not as bad as New Paris, but many complain it’s too stretched out for human-sized sociability. Too chopped up into separate blocks to encourage spontaneous human interaction.
So while the Geisel does provide a marvelous vision of futurity for UCSD — even now, a half century after it went up — Do Ho Suh’s weird little house falling from heaven is perhaps more honest about our weird life right now.
Do Ho Suh felt untethered from his homeland. This is how he expressed it. I suspect it’s the way lots of students feel. Looming outside the comforts of this little pretend home, to quote Wikipedia, you get “the unsettling impersonal nature of a large academic institution.” Whatever, you gotta see it. Do Ho Suh’s house is open for on-the-spot inspections Wednesdays and Thursdays. Take an elevator up the Jacobs building.
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