Melting House

down

Pantera offered their services at no cost to construct the roof and specialist internal timber framework for this building for British artist Alex Chinneck, who created a two storey house of wax for a project titled 'A pound of flesh for 50p'. The project was run by Laing O'Rourke working with Southwark Council as part of the Merge Festival 2014. Pantera were supported generously with the provision of free materials from Travis Perkins. The life-size building made entirely of wax mimicked the scale and design of a famous candle-making factory that was based in the same area several centuries ago. Constructed with 8,000 wax bricks and weighing 10 metric tons, the house was heated each morning with a handheld heating machine, allowing it to slowly melt down in hypnotic fashion and the roof was then mechanically lowered to remain on top of the house as it melted.

Where

Southwark

Client

Alex Chinneck