Flipping Properties is an outdoor installation commissioned by Rear View (Projects) for a laneway in Toronto’s Little Portugal neighborhood. It is a five-sided object that can be flipped in multiple orientations.

The project is a continuation of an ongoing study of super-furnitures: ‘too big to be furniture and too small to be architecture.’ The installation takes the familiar house icon, the pentagon, as its starting point. As this shape rotates, the readability of the house becomes flipped and denatured. This intervention in Toronto’s urban fabric provokes us to reconsider the potential uses for overlooked spaces in the city and question typical modes of interaction between art, place and audiences.

During the opening event on July 11, 2014, pieces of the installation were flipped and moved into place within the laneway, creating a place for neighbors to gather and imagine an architecture that can reorient.

CBC host, Britt Wray joined Jimenez Lai in a discussion on ‘rotation’ from the varied perspectives of architecture and science.

Flipping Properties was supported by the Ontario Arts Council.