How a Pretend Rat Duped Everyone (ft. Tier Zoo)

__Special Thanks__
@TierZoo for contributing his wisdom!
+ Adam LeBarge for the Rat Hole Replica
+ Evan Montgomery for production and editing.

__Description__
In this video, we explore the unexpected intersection of art and urban life as we unravel the story of the Chicago Rat Hole—an accidental urban sculpture that has captured the imagination of a community and beyond. Located in a northern Chicago neighborhood, this seemingly mundane sidewalk anomaly has transformed into a symbol of curiosity, amusement, and cultural significance.

What is it and why has it become so famous? From its viral spread on social media to its comparison with iconic landmarks, this object reveals the thin line between accidental incidents and artistic creation, questioning conventional values and community in the architectural framework.

We make a replica of the Rat Hole to see what it would take and put ourselves in the position of an artist making the thing, and the art practices through history it relates to. That are the philosophical implications of the Rat Hole? Maybe considering its status as an indexical sign will unveil its deeper meanings.

Rats are multi-faceted symbols, maybe the perfect symbol for the city of Chicago. Join us in celebrating Chicago's newest landmark through a love letter to the Rat Hole, reflecting on the beauty and imperfections that define our urban surroundings.

Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments. Has the Rat Hole changed your perception of urban art and accidental beauty? What other unnoticed art lies beneath our feet?

__Membership__
Join this channel to get access to perks:

__About the Channel__
Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.

__About Me__
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.

__Contact__
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco

__Special Thanks__
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound

#architecture #urbandesign

[Bruhyeet]

Not a crossover i would've expected.

[Conformist]

I love the fact that the words "Chicago Rat Hole" are so evocative, by themselves making you imagine all sorts of possible meanings for the phrase. And then you see it, and realize you never considered taking it absolutely literally.

[bigdaddyhame]

Here in Toronto we had a similar situation with an expired raccoon lying on the sidewalk near one of our busiest intersections - and for a couple of weeks Torontonians decorated the rigid rodent with various tokens and it became a shrine of sorts. Eventually the carcass was cleaned up by the city but our beloved trash panda will live on in our collective memory.

[ForeignManinaForeignLand]

The one time Master Splinter left the sewer

[PLuMUK]

I used to use an identical "icon" rat when I taught my classes about the Black Death. I'd go to the store room and come back to the classroom, apparently stroking a small animal. Horror is the only way to describe when they thought I'd brought a rat into the room. I was a totally sadistic teacher, I'd choose a nearby pupil and call out, "Here! Catch!" as I threw the rat towards them. A few screams, followed by almost hysterical laughter 😂

According to parents, it was my most talked about lesson at home, and bless them, the pupils never spread the word, ensuring that I could play the same trick again and again 😁

[Tclans]

“No armor or strong weapons to retaliate with”

This had me in snickers 🤣

[winslowdumaine]

Lol I'm the guy who posted the first viral tweet about it. Sup. If anyone wants a plaster cast of the Rat Hole, I'm giving them away to anyone who donates $25 to Sarah's Circle, a shelter for homeless women in Chicago. Thanks again!

[alexroselle]

RIP Squirrel, yet another artist whose genius went under-recognized during their lifetime

[tristanogrambuckley]

I love these incidental sculptures in the concrete. My favorites are often human footprints. The way they tell the story is wonderful: usually the first two footprints are relatively aligned, normally spaced, etc, but the third print is almost always in a strange position, far from the second: unbalanced, uncertain, and carrying with it some measure of the surprise and dismay felt by the person who made it. I like to try to follow these prints sometimes to get a better sense of the particular stumbling panic-walk that caused them. Just something worth thinking about.

I'm really chuffed to find the rat hole gaining popularity since I left Chicago. I used to live just a couple blocks away and it's awesome to see such notoriety for what was a much more local inside joke just a few short years ago.

[Generic_storie]

What a crazy time this was. I was getting so many texts from friends and family outside of Chicago asking if it was real and if I’d been. It got annoying pretty fast with people kind of going insane. I always felt bad for the residents. It was such a fun random thing to come across walking around one night when I first moved to the neighborhood. Never really thought twice about it until it got “mainstream” and now it’s gone. RIP Stucky. He believed he could fly.

[RiverWilliamson]

In order to view The Rat Hole, you must agree that you are not Anish Kapoor nor are you viewing it on behalf of Anish Kapoor

[CoolAsFreya]

I consider the Chicago rat hole as a modern day imprint fossil, a piece of archeology that gives clues to how a specific organism lived!

[johnwieczorek]

Strange that there are no paw prints to show how the rat escaped.

[mack.attack]

8:54 oh my god, if you have the chance to see City by Heizer, it is incredible. My best friend and I went last summer and it was such a great day just exploring this vast piece of land art in the vast desert chatting about what it means and interacting with it

[verafiedposter]

The rat hole is a bit like a negative landscape art - instead of "mankind" making an imprint into nature, which brings a sensation of something that looks structured out of the unstructured - it is a sense of unstructured into the structured, nature making its imprint into "mankind"s extensions that are cities. It is a reminder of the eternal of the temporary, how entropy is a universal principle.

[farinshore]

Where are the footprints that the rodent would have left escaping the "hole?"

[bartolomeothesatyr]

I clicked on this video thinking to myself "What mystery? A rat fell off a telephone wire into wet concrete, " but it turns out the mystery lies in the process by which mankind ascribes meaning to environmental happenstance. We sure do like to infer intentionality from indifference and assign significance to literally insignificant things.

[indeedgrasshopper]

And just because I watched way too many cartoons as a kid, when you mentioned replicating it, I imagined a guy with a sack full of squirrels chucking them at a slab of wet concrete. Glad you took the high road. :D

[alexanderboulton]

Still closer to real art than Stable Diffusion

[EatSleepEmpire]

The imprint is not the art. The art is the collective interaction with the imprint. The offerings, the fillings, photos, the backstories. The way we pretend to, or to some extent actually, worship or inflate the importance of something so mundane.