Nonprofit plans Kenyan clinic modeled after St. Paul home

Artist Chris Larson, left, and Daylight co-founder Michael Kimpur at the Breuer house in St. Paul’s Highwood Hills neighborhood. The two hope to build a replica of the home to serve as a health care clinic in Kumpur’s homeland of Kenya. (Courtesy of Alan Gerlach)

By Amy Carlson Gustafson
agustafson@pioneerpress.com

When Chris Larson burned down his life-size replica of a St. Paul house designed by famed modernist architect Marcel Breuer at the Northern Spark art festival in 2013, it was quite a spectacle. One of the reasons for the burn was to open a door to possibilities — to unleash potential.

Little did he know that open door would lead to Kenya. 

“It’s like when you burn the fields to generate new growth,” said the St. Paul-based artist. “That’s exactly what’s happening.”

There’s a plan to rebuild Larson’s Breuer house replica in Kenya. But this one won’t be set on fire. Instead, it will serve as a clinic.

Daylight, a St. Paul nonprofit organization, hopes to raise $75,000 for the materials and labor needed for the project — dubbed “The House Beyond the End of the Road” — through the crowdfunding website Indiegogo.READ MORE