Design Exploration

Fallen Star

Fallen Star is a playful experimental design project where I transformed UC San Diego’s iconic installation Fallen Star—a small house perched on the edge of the engineering building by artist Do Ho Suh—into a hand-crafted, multi-layered wooden miniature. Using Inkscape for vector design and a laser cutter for fabrication, I recreated the piece through a series of nested planes that highlight its spatial depth, narrative tension, and emotional resonance.

My Role

Creator

Collaborators

Independent Work

Date

Sep 2024

Introduction

When I first encountered Fallen Star, a small blue house precariously perched on the edge of a engineering building, I was struck not only by its visual absurdity but by the story behind it. Artist Do Ho Suh created the piece after immigrating from South Korea to the United States, expressing what it felt like to live “on the edge” of two cultures, always slightly displaced yet searching for belonging.

As someone who also grew up between the U.S. and Korea, that symbolism resonated immediately. I understood the sensation of being suspended between identities.

I wanted to reinterpret Fallen Star not just as a photograph, but as a physical artifact that preserves both its architecture and its emotional narrative. To do this, I built a miniature using Inkscape for vector drafting, a laser cutter for precision fabrication, and layer-by-layer wooden assembly to recreate its depth, tilt, and quiet instability. Through engraving and structural detailing, I aimed to express the tension between home, balance, and belonging that the original piece evokes.

Fallen Star Photographed by The UCSD Guardians

Process

Since the laser cutter requires very precise instructions, I had to pay the most attention on what to cut and what not to cut. Keeping that in mind, I began by sketching and then modeling it on Inkscape (vector graphic design software).

Sketches of Fallen Star

Laser Cutter Video (my fav part of this project!)

Sketches of Fallen Star Laser Cutter Video (my fav part of this project!)

Final design

What this project taught me

Creating this wooden miniature became much more than a fabrication exercise. I loved watching how flat 2D layers gradually formed a dimensional object. As I researched the real Fallen Star at UCSD, I also discovered the story behind it: a home intentionally placed at the edge of a building to symbolize dislocation, exclusion, and liminality.

This struck me deeply. I had always seen Fallen Star as an interesting landmark, but learning its intention made me reflect on my own experience balancing multiple cultures. In many ways, I had also lived between worlds, sometimes feeling out of place, sometimes adapting to new environments faster than I realized. Through this project, I recognized that what once felt like “being an outsider” was actually a source of strength. Embracing different cultures made me multilingual, open-minded, and deeply appreciative of different perspectives.

This small design project illuminated that meaning often lives beneath the surface, and that my own multicultural background is not a gap to fill, but an asset I bring into my design work.

← Go back