The Norwegians-in-Brooklyn architecutre firm Snohetta are doing the new SFMOMA building. So when the museum leaned on them to donate work to a fundraising auction last year, they put up a dollhouse.
It is an insane, psychedelic wunderkammer of a dollhouse, overloaded with decoration and lasercut pattern like a Facebook acquihire billionaire's gingerbread Victorian, which is probably exactly who it was targeting. [The estimate for the house, one of two made, was $15-25,000. No word on the final take, but it was certainly the cheapest house sold in San Francisco since 2000.]
Anyway, in the Vine above, Snohetta partner Craig Dykers demonstrates how to open the dollhouse by just--wow, just a couple of fingers, and it splits wide open in some staggered, mysterious, asymmetrical and perhaps allusive way, delivering up the miniaturized wonder hidden inside.
Here it is in its more sedate, closed state on the architects' website: 74 - Bloomberry Dollhouse. First created for a children's hospital charity auction. Those exposed joists and complex interior bring to mind the Serpentine Pavilion from 2007. There are additional interior shots, but me, I can't stop staring at that Vine.
Snohetta Dollhouse, 2012, est. $15,000 - 25,000 [sfmoma.org]
74 - Bloomberry Dollhouse [snohetta.com, thanks dt reader erik for the suggestive]
