The Rice Gallery features site-specific, commissioned installations and every one that I have visited there has been extraordinary. Last Fall, an installation by Aurora Robson used cut plastic bottles and rivets to create winding translucent tunnels and domes. When I took my two-year-old daughter to visit she ran through it with arms outstretched pretending to be a dragon. The gallery's next adventure is a departure from the lyrical, morphogenic pieces I have come to associate with it. In fact, it's a "FEMA trailer."
In August 2006, on a visit to post-Katrina New Orleans, Paul Villinski wished he could transport his studio from New York to the Lower Ninth Ward, so he could create work in response to the conditions he found there. Creating Emergency Response Studio was his solution. Over seven months, Villinski transformed a salvaged FEMA-style trailer into a rolling, off-the-grid live/work space that could house displaced artists, or allow visiting artists to “embed” in post-disaster settings.
“I believe we ought to consider deploying artists as part of the mix of disaster workers, medical personnel, NGO’s, architects, and urban planners – those people charged with responding to, repairing, and re-envisioning disaster sites like New Orleans,” says Villinski. To this end, from April to October of 2008, Villinski worked nonstop, gutting, rebuilding, and playfully rethinking a 30-foot Gulfstream “Cavalier” trailer virtually identical to the 50,000 trailers built by Gulfstream for FEMA. Re-born as the Emergency Response Studio, the trailer’s formaldehyde-ridden original materials are replaced by entirely “green” technology and building materials, including recycled denim insulation, bamboo cabinetry, compact fluorescent lighting, reclaimed wood, and natural linoleum floor tiles made from linseed oil. It is powered by eight mammoth batteries that store energy generated by an array of solar panels and a “micro” wind turbine atop a 40-foot high mast. Not only practical, Emergency Response Studio is a visually engaging structure with an expansive work area featuring a wall section that lowers to become a deck. A ten-foot, elliptical geodesic skylight allows extra headroom and natural lighting in the work area. Though designed as an artist’s studio and residence, Emergency Response Studio is an ingenious prototype for self-sufficient, solar-powered mobile housing.
Emergency Response Studio
Emergency Response Studio will be installed in front of the gallery on the Brochstein Plaza. It is the second in an ongoing series of architectural installations; the first was Bamboo Roof by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. Paul Villinski’s project will be accompanied by an installation in Rice Gallery which details the construction process, and features further information about “movable” housing.
The installation will also be accompanied by an exhibit by the Rice University Solar Decathlon team. The current issue of Cite includes a short piece on the home that is now under construction and will eventually be transported to the National Mall.
Below is a schedule of events:
Thursday, 29 January
Opening Celebration 5:00 - 7:00 pm
Remarks by Paul Villinski at 6:00 pm
Friday, 30 January at Noon
Gallery Talk by Paul Villinski
Complimentary light lunch for all who attend
Saturday, 31 January - Sunday, 1 February
Paul Villinski will be on site to answer questions
about Emergency Response Studio.
