When Public Art Meets a Stupid Construction Mistake

To live in Karlsruhe must be to constantly drift in a fog of disorientation. Thanks to a vibrant arts scene, the German city is stocked with strange, reality-bending objects—a cloud inside a building, a truck whose hindquarters are raised like a bucking bronco, and now an entire house hanging from a crane, perhaps the victim of a drunk construction worker.

The domicile is suspended above a market square and has a thicket of roots jutting from its base, suggesting it was violently yanked from the land. It is, of course, a manufactured accident—"Pulled by the Roots," by Argentina’s Leandro Erlich. (You might recall his other work in London, which had people seemingly Spidey-crawling across a house’s facade.)