Designed to coincide with the exhibition Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity, The Builder’s Lounge furniture installation at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago re-purposed construction site materials into ad-hoc furniture, providing visitors a space to relax, read, or create their own artwork on the Museum’s 4th floor windows.

Visitors were encouraged to imagine the process of building skyscrapers by being confronted with the accoutrements of the building trade. In The Builder’s Lounge, bulk bags become armchairs, scaffolding creates counters and stone slabs on pallets make coffee tables. By recontextualizing familiar construction site objects in layouts associated with domestic space, the installation aims to create an uncanny balance between the real and the surreal and raise questions about the status of designed objects in gallery environments.