The Setup
“Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.” -Sol LeWitt
It started with a question: “What if we covered all 18 indoor floating office pods with paper airplanes?” The project sought to reinvigorate a sense of wonder for the provocative, whimsical University of Tennessee Art+Architecture building (affectionately known as the A+A, or “A-and-A”) that gets a bad rap for its worn concrete. By taking a symbol of disorder and delinquency – a crash-landed paper airplane on the dusty roof of an office pod – and cranking up the dials, it tips over to become an exhibition of order and labor, showcasing the building’s character and the tireless hard work that occurs inside. The project also raised conversations around questioning single authorship, landscape and scale, drawing people from other parts of the university into the overlooked A+A, repetition of the banal to produce something beautiful, and communal effort towards a common cause.
John Hamilton and I assembled a team of 15 art and architecture students, in an effort to bridge the literal and metaphorical gap between the two colleges, to collectively fold 45,000 paper airplanes over the course of six months. Steady daily effort and “folding parties” got the job done (We made it to 42,371). Another 10 students from a range of majors joined the crew to install the project and deinstall it three days later.
