A new publication spotlights Gordon Matta-Clark’s only extant architectural piece

In 1972, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–78) installed a dumpster on the street between 98 and 112 Greene Street in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, an architectural artwork he called Open House. Matta-Clark used discarded, scavenged materials―old pieces of wood, doors―to subdivide the space inside the dumpster, creating corridors and small rooms within the container. Dancers and artists moved around the space, their pedestrian movements activating the sculpture and captured in a Super-8 film of the piece.