BLUE CUBE, 1986Built in 1986 on site at Diane Brown Gallery in New York City, Blue Cube/Apartment was meant to be read both as autonomous object and as architectural paradigm. The ten by ten by ten foot structure was constructed from the inside out with a complex metal stud frame covered in common wallboard. Both interior and exterior surfaces were painted with multiple sanded layers of paint to simulate a solid plastic form. Passageways, rooms of varied height and width, skylights, and slot-like windows pierced what appeared to be one foot thick walls at eye, chest, and crotch level. These negative spaces were intended to appear ‘carved’ out of the primitive solid. Accessing the interior spaces the visitor (as inhabitant) was contained and also framed in views from both within and without. The beauty of the light in the interior was unexpected in a space designed to be rather aggressive in its rigid geometric design and confining scale. For me it made for a structure that was a surprisingly seductive Pavlovian box. Operating as a model for a construction process, I imagined Blue Cube/Apartment as an architecture that might be realized through a series of extractions from a solid mass. Or through the high volume production of forms cast from an enormous mold.
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