windblown sheets cover 'ghost house' poetic installation by i/thee in california's high desert

design collaborative i/thee introduces ‘ghost house’, a wooden installation covered with windblown sheets that studies the relationship between architecture and the wind at california’s high desert. the project was executed as part of design laboratory space saloon’s 2018 mobile education camp that asked participants to construct installations investigating notions of context as they relate to environmental factors. the resulting structure emerges as a poetic expression that questions outstanding notions of authorship in design, inviting weather, and the environment as an active participant in the process.

all images courtesy of daniel schwartz 

‘ghost house’ by i/thee was conceived as an experiment in material manipulation, the form of which is directly dependent on the weather, environment, as well as time itself. the construction began with the erection of light wooden frames to create the formal outlines of two small houses, and then, custom-cut canvas sheets were soaked in non-toxic adhesive and draped over the frames. over the course of a few hours, these sheets froze into solid objects while blowing in the strong mountain winds. finally, cubic apertures were cut from the canvases, to further reference the formal memory of a house. ‘the final result is a three-dimensional snapshot of a specific moment in time,’ the designers share. ‘it is an improbable structure: a representation of the past existing in the present, neither here nor there; the ghost of a house’. 

while bio-design typically posits to create architecture resembling nature or natural processes, i/thee has taken the challenge literally — ‘ghost house’ doesn’t just look like a curtain blowing in the wind; it is a curtain blowing in the wind. here, architecture transcends traditional values of composition and function and instead exalts in the primal beauty of nature through the embodiment of the exact climatic conditions of one instant in time solidified in a billowing canvas sheet.

project info:

name: ghost house
design studio: i/thee
project team: neal lucas hitch, martin hitch, kristina fisher, thatsama leeumnadwong, thanjira vimonanupong, ranchana rungwatanawong, tanaboon kittisrikangwan, chutimon suetragulwong 

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: myrto katsikopoulou | designboom