HOUSE-CITY is a development of HOUSE the project Weileder piloted as a 2 day time based sculptural event during ConnectingPrinciple in October 2002.

Presented as part of the Arena Project and supported by the Samling Foundation and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, HOUSE-CITY is a major and ambitious time-based sculpture. Three storeys high, it will be constructed from the 14th to the 17th of July, beside the city landmark of the Earl Grey Monument in Grainger Town, Central Newcastle.

Around the clock, two groups of builders will simultaneously construct and de-construct the two identical shells of HOUSE-CITY during the four days. 6.3 m high shells will be built out of lightweight blocks up to third floor level and juxtaposed with each other in rotational symmetry. The process will be synchronized so that the construction and de-construction is choreographed sequentially: The opposite segments of the two shells will slowly move around each other until HOUSE-CITY is completed. Two separate houses will appear on the same spot at the same time.

HOUSE-CITY will be recorded using a unique process. Five specially constructed cameras will be positioned strategically around the sculpture. The photographic plates will be exposed for the four days to produce time lapsed black and white photographs. The resulting large-scale photographs will eventually reveal the only complete view of the two separate houses, the overlaid shells, of HOUSE-CITY. Additionally, a time-lapse video and 16mm movie will be made.

HOUSE-CITY becomes a structure of constant movement as walls appear and disappear, its spatiality constantly changing and unstable. This will raise questions about the permanence of architectural structures, their relationship to their surroundings, and the nature of housing. Architecture is re-defined as what we might consider to be a permanent structure becomes animated and temporary.

As a work of collaboration, HOUSE-CITY reveals the process, the labour and skill of building as a visible experience. The construction of the monumental becomes an event, a visible and spatial experience of a process in flux rather than the presentation of a finished architectural structure.

The choice of this prominent site next to the Earl Grey Monument in the heart of Newcastle draws on the significance of the location as an architectural showcase as well as its historical references.

HOUSE-CITY explores the relationship between the temporary and the permanent in architecture as well as investigating the boundaries between process, artwork and documentation.

HOUSE-CITY is part of the ARENA project, supported by the Samling Foundation and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle. The photographs and the movie will subsequently be shown in an exhibition of the ARENA project at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle. A catalogue will be published.