At the center of Rice Gallery sits SHOTGUN, a house-like structure inspired by Houston’s historic row houses. The title for the installation comes from the row house’s common nickname “shotgun,” a term coined to describe its corridor- like layout that allows a clear path or “shot” from front to back door. This deceptively simple form of architecture, comprised of understated geometry (an elongated box with a pitched roof) and basic construction, was often passed down without formal plans or drawings and made from scrap wood or inexpensive lumber. Principals Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima of Tokyo-based architecture studio Atelier Bow-Wow collaborated with Jesús Vassallo, Spanish architect and professor at Rice University, and with the students of the Rice School of Architecture to dig far beneath the surface of this assumed simplicity and to celebrate the row house’s ingenuity.Over the fall semester of 2014, Atelier Bow-Wow and Jesús Vassallo taught the course “Learning from Houston” to intensively study the row house’s history and contemporary condition and to simultaneously use this research to design and build a new site-specific installation for Rice Gallery.