Iowa City ped mall art aims to create community

IOWA CITY - They're iconic, dotting Iowa's rolling hills for more than a century: American foursquare homes.

Hallmarked by their boxy style inside and out, the homes traditionally are square with hipped roofs, arched entryways and large front porches fit with hanging wooden swings. They could be ordered out of a catalog - from companies like Sears or Aladdin - showing up in a boxcar with directions and numbered parts for self-assembly, like a book shelf or bunk bed.

Imagine families stomping up the porch steps for holidays; parents squeezing kids into the swing for photos; and children pausing backyard play to charge through the house and welcome guests at the front door.

Hannah Givler, like many, grew up in one, and it came to mind when a friend involved in Public Space One passed on her information to the Iowa City Downtown District. The district was seeking an art installation for the somewhat blank space on the Pedestrian Mall near Washington and Dubuque streets, and Givler - who earned her master's degree from the Art Institute of Chicago - is a lecturer in the University of Iowa Studio Arts Department.

'We had conversation about a temporary public sculpture installation that could provide some space for gathering, and maybe some shade, and be a part of creating a sense of place in this otherwise sort of blank-paper space on the ped mall,” Givler said.

She came up with a few proposals, and they liked the prairie box-inspired home. Its wide-open steal structure mimics an American foursquare frame - about 75 percent to scale, with a platform stretching 25 feet on each side and supports rising 25 feet high.

But it's distinct in an important way.

'I thought about what it would mean to make a house that had an entrance on every side,” Givler said. 'So I modified that traditional form and just added a porch on every single side.”

All the porches have swings.

'It's a place that people are invited to gather and make themselves temporarily at home in public,” she said.

There are no walls or permanent fixtures.

'It's left open so people could program it or have spontaneous play, or whatever,” Givler said.

She's worked with art department colleagues to construct the piece in the UI Visual Arts Building and spent the week moving it to the Pedestrian Mall. The city has allowed an exception to its normal 30-day installation rule - letting the district keep it up for 90 days through October.

'Just until it gets cold and people don't want to be outside,” she said.

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