Barry Bergdoll: “MIT is a great center of research into the possibilities of digital computation and their applicability, not only to abstract mathematics but to really solving real life, every day problems. And one of the most interesting laboratories at MIT is led by the young architect/computer scientist, Larry Sass.
Larry Sass: The building looks strange. It looks like a store-bought toy. What makes this house so unique is that we completely rethought how buildings should go together. The way we chose to make this house was out of interlocking parts with no fasteners and no screws or mechanical attachments. It's very hard for people to understand that you could draw a little attachment and it has the same mechanical strength as a screw. In fact, it's stronger than a screw because you have parts completely interlocking to other parts.
The building is an IKEA-style assembly process. You open the box, each part has a number, and it's put together by rubber mallet, a glue gun and every now and then we use a crow bar to align a couple of pieces. But for the most part two people can put this together with very little help.
Larry Sass: This system could be used for New Orleans to rebuild the fabric of the city still struggling shamelessly three years later to recover from Katrina.
Larry Sass: I enjoy seeing buildings as an expression of the people in that environment. I find New Orleans to be an incredibly special place. What makes it so special is that it's very colorful, very ornate, and very detailed. //The Shotgun House is the only true African-American architectural symbol in the United States. It's been around since slavery and many have assumed that the Shotgun House was made in Africa.
One thing you'll notice in particular is the frieze over the front door and the porch. You will notice that it has a lot of curvature to it, a lot of ornament, a lot of fine detail that we recreated from photographs and visits to New Orleans. We also tried desperately to elaborate on the existing detail, not to copy what we saw with precision. We wanted to have a little bit more expression and take it a couple of steps further.