Counterweight Roommate

Tethered to either end of a single rope that goes over the top of this tall thin building, movement in this vertical house for two depends on using the body mass of one’s roommate as a counter weight to aid ascent or slow descent. When one occupant wishes to go up to the kitchen at the top level, the other must go down to the bathroom at the bottom. Between these two rooms are two private sleep / work rooms on levels two and four, and a common room at level three where the ends of the rope meet. Counterweight Roommate was continuously inhabited for five full days of Scope Basel in 2011 by performance-architecture artists Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley, and acquired in 2015 by New York’s Museum of Modern Art.