UCSD’s Stuart Collection will add its 18th piece this fall — a 15-by-18-foot house called “Fallen Star” by Korean artist Do Ho Suh. The structure will be placed on top of EBU-1 in the Jacobs School of Engineering on Nov. 3.

“It’s probably the most complex [piece] we’ve ever undertaken,” director of the Stuart Collection Mary Beebe said in a Sept. 26 UCSD press release. “It is fitting that it will be in the residence at the Jacobs School [of Engineering], not far from another of the Stuart Collection’s engineering feat, Tim Hawkinson’s ‘Bear.’”

“Fallen Star” is designed at one-third the scale of a small house in Providence, R.I. The house, complete with cement slab and steel framing, is currently under construction at Warren Mall and will be raised to the seventh floor of EBU-1. It will be built in to the side of the building at an angle with half of the house floating in the air.

Suh — who moved from Seoul, South Korea in 1991 to attend the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University — is expected to attend the hoisting of the house on Nov. 3 at Warren Mall.
The interior decoration of the house and yard of “Fallen Star” will be decorated by Suh and will be open to the public in January 2012. 

Beebe further stated that maintenance will have to be kept on the piece of art and encouraged students to volunteer.

 “I’m nervous about the experience of going up there but I think that is part of the point,” Beebe said.

According to Beebe, Suh often focuses on themes of displacement and the feeling of home in his work. Suh’s “Fallen Star” piece also explores the cultural meaning of space, especially in the context of increased globalization.

 Hodges and Hodges, one of San Diego’s leading design firms, is heading the architecture for this project.
 
The Stuart Collection is funding the piece solely through private donations and a $90,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts.