Vito Acconci
UMBRELLA HOUSE
(PROTOTYPE FOR AN UMBRELLA CITY) 1982

Steel, fabric, cable & pulleys
16' x 17' x 17’


An umbrella that can be opened up to form a roof over separate rooms analogous to individual houses in a city.

The closed umbrella is eighteen feet high. By turning a crank on the pole, a person can open the umbrella: the diameter is about sixteen feet, the umbrella is made of camouflage fabric -- on top of the camouflage is a 'Coca Cola' logo, in bloated yellow letters.

The umbrella functions as a roof. The umbrella is made up of six triangular sections; under every other triangle, on the ground beneath it, is a triangular structure of shade-rollers. If the person who opened the umbrella keeps his /her hand on the crank, keeping the umbrella open, other people can come in under the umbrella, stepping inside the triangular floor sections: by pulling on a ring that hangs down from the umbrella, each person can bring up shades from the rollers below, making a wedge-shaped room (or house) around himself /herself.

Each room has three sides. One side is a flag (a field of color: the flags are of the kind that has no insignia, the flag is like a landscape or a wall): a Polish flag for one room, an Irish flag for the second, an Argentine flag for the third. The second side of the room is white, covered over with a black public symbol, like the sign for a toilet: the sign has been tampered with: on one room, the male image has one arm missing -- on the second room, the female image has her head blown off to the side, on the third room, the baby floats on a diagonal. The third side is the same on all three rooms: black fabric with a doorway cut out in the shape of a penis (and/or bomb) -- rising from the top of the cut-out are yellow spurts, joining the yellow of the Coca Cola sign on the umbrella roof above.

 

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