Designer of 'floating house' in Flint excited to tell story of design

Scott Atkinson | By Scott Atkinson | The Flint Journal
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on July 26, 2013 at 6:00 PM, updated July 26, 2013 at 7:27 PM

FLINT, MI -- William Villalobos does not want to talk about how the pavilion he designed, being built in downtown Flint right now, will be 28 feet tall.

He does not want to talk about the reflective five-mil Mylar that will cover the structure, made to look like a floating house of mirrors. Nor does he want to talk about how it will take exactly 882 light boxes to make up the interior ceiling of the structure, or that it is designed to withstand 90 mile-per-hour winds, or that the pedestal on which the "house" stands weighs between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds.

Don't mention building permits or delays. He doesn't want to talk about those either.

Villalobos wants to tell you a story.

"(Everyone's) focus is on the technical, and not the vision," he said, sitting in the Flint Crepe Co. in downtown Flint.

Villalobos will be in Flint for about ten days while construction of the pavilion in the downtown flat lot gets underway. He's part of a three-man team, Two Islands, that designed the structure that won the inaugural Flat Lot Competition, a contest that drew worldwide attention from designers and architects vying for a $25,000 budget to build a temporary pavilion in Flint that would serve as a vision for the city.

And he's too excited about that vision to talk about technical details.

The design is titled Mark's House, and the idea is that it tells the story of a Flint man named Mark who has lost his house to foreclosure. The reflective surfaces are intended to show that the house is literally a reflection of the city around it.

"Everyone loses something. A relative, a pet, a house, you lose everything. So that gap that is created by lifting the house up is symbolic of that absence and that sense of abandonment. But it also represents shelter and what it means to have something over your head that means so much to you," Villalobos said.

Construction from workers Sorenson Gross Construction Services, who offered their services for free to construct the building, were down the street from the crepe shop building the frame of the pedestal on which the "house" portion of the structure will sit. One of them is Jason Kross.

"It's kind of thrilling to be a part of a project like this. It's not something we normally get to do." Kross said. He mostly does concrete work with Sorenson Gross. "And the project being from a worldwide competition, here we get to do it in Flint."

Villalobos said he's explained the project to a few of the contractors who were curious about just what they were building.

"He just wanted to know—why? He wanted to know, what's the actual symbolic, conceptual meaning of a floating house? What is its spirit?" Villalobos said.

"When you're able to explain this to somebody who does nuts and bolts for a living—and they get excited, and they smile about it, and they say, 'I want to keep working on this project, I would rather do this than any project right now'—it shows the power of design."

Scott Hook is the project manager for the pavilion. He was referred through a chain of colleagues that led back to the Flint Public Art Project and other local architects who put the contest on. He's a former Navy officer currently working toward a master's degree in architecture, and even though he's away from his San Diego home and not getting paid, he said he's where he want to be right now.

He said some people don't quite grasp that the project is a big deal.

He cited other famous rotating pavilion structures like the Serpentine Pavilion in London and another in New York that attract the attention of architects and tourists.

His impression of Flint locals so far, he said, is that "they want something that highlights Flint at a national and global level as something other than the most dangerous city in America. You can hear it. We talk to people day in and day out and they say, 'this city isn't as bad as its being made out to be.' That's how we see this, a way to bring Flint to the national view in a positive way, because (the pavilion) already been highlighted all over the world."

Hook described his time in Flint as a "once in the lifetime opportunity."

Mark's House, he said, "pushes the boundaries of what people are used to thinking and what people think is possible. The engineering for it alone is progressive, but completely sound. ... Being able to build this, it's incredible."