A 'Quasi Legal Skyscraper' in Pasadena

In Pasadena at One Colorado Court, you’ll find a “small skycraper” created by artist Chris Burden with architects Taalman Koch. It’s not actually that tall, at 35 feet high, but Small Skyscraper, subtitled “Quasi Legal Skyscraper,” feels like a tower because it’s so slender, at 10 by 10 feet wide, built of extruded aluminum, with four wooden floors. It was conceived ten years ago as a kind of folly: the largest structure allowable that you could build without needing a building permit: 35 feet tall and no larger than 400 square feet. The project was part of a series of collaborations with artists, initiated by Taalman Koch called Trespassing: Houses by Artists. Linda Taalman of Taalman Koch is the co-designer with Burden and talks about the point the project was hoping to make. The project was sponsored by the Armory Center for the Arts and it was previously shown at LACE gallery.

The Small Skyscraper at One Colorado Court and an explainer of the project by Chris Burden, photos by Frances Anderton