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Architects: SHED Architecture & Design
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Rafael Soldi
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Manufacturers: L&S
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Lead Architects: Kara Greenetz, Prentis Hale
“Ghost Cabin” is a site specific installation located in Seattle’s Chophouse Row. The installation is inspired by the site’s historical past—a frontier homestead whose foundations still lie below the courtyard. By re-imagining the frontier cabin in heavy cedar planks, the artists pay homage to the site’s history and create a focal point for the public space.
Completed in 2018, the installation was commissioned by Liz Dunn of Dunn + Hobbes, developer of Chophouse Row, and Greg Lundgren, a local artist and curator. Criteria included the site-specific artwork “take risks and create an outsized visual and visceral presence that is newsworthy and dramatic.” A strong desire was also expressed for artwork that would add “an organic, primordial material presence” to an otherwise forlorn corner in the Chophouse Row courtyard.
To create the installation, cedar planks were applied to the various surfaces within the boundary of the courtyard corner, collaging together the disparate elements to create a unified tactile composition. The distorted field of wood comes together as both a natural focal point in the courtyard space and serves as a backdrop to reorient perspectives.
The cabin shape is, from most vantage points, unrecognizable—an evocative and distorted layered wood plank sculpture. But from one precise vantage point, the cedar planks momentarily re-assemble and the silhouette of the gable cabin is revealed.