New Hampshire House

Coit says of her 1971 immersive environment “New Hampshire House":

“‘New Hampshire House’ was an opportunity given me by some men who taught at MIT, who provided the materials and equipment. They called this event Ecology Tool and Toy. They were trying to create inventions that would not damage the environment, that would work with whatever environment they were used in. They were interested in the relationships between science and design, and they proposed this collaboration. I got the chance to make a living space (a space in which to live) by spraying extruded chemicals onto inflatables or shapes that we could dig out later, just leaving the exoskeleton. We used very large balloons—weather balloons—sometimes only half-inflated, so that I could create shapes—for example, a bench or banquette. Windows could be cut with a saw. 

“It was near a quarry in New Hampshire, in a cleared area where the original owners had taken out trees. As for the plan—I saw it in my head, which is not necessarily the best way to spend thousands of dollars and hours worth of equipment, but it seemed to work well. We determined that would be the site, they helped me drag materials around. 

“When it was completed, the MIT fellow—Avery Remington Johnson III—brought people out to visit the site. There was a clarity, and yet it was softened. The volume went down. The rounded shapes changed the (size, or the way in which the frequencies were bounced, of the) sound waves. 

“I would never do it now, such a toxic event. But I had a cherry picker at my disposal and a lot of people working with me. It remained a couple of years before it was taken down. It was dismantled, because over time it would have degraded into the landscape, and we didn’t want that.”