The Young Architects Program is an annual collaboration between The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 that fosters innovative design research and promotes emerging talent. Five finalists for the PS1 courtyard design will be featured in an exhibition at MoMA this summer, including two entries by GSD faculty.
Cameron Wu‘s Coney Inland formally unifies and spatially modulates the courtyard site. A series of developable surfaces (cones and cylinders) and their base structures normalize the contingencies of scale and shape of the three courtyard spaces, while their legible transformations register the idiosyncratic nature of the overall site geometry. Architectural translations of qualities inherent to the ocean-side precedent, Coney Inland imports the culture of Coney Island’s casual beach leisure into the courtyard at MoMA PS1.
The Mechanical Garden by Ibañez Kim Studio (Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim) is a social stage for PS1 activities as well as for architecture-as-characters. A strong figural demarcation assembles a series of Characters into generously shaded arcades and walkways. This peripheral organization reinforces the existing geometries of the courtyard walls, but thickens them with canopy and program, to allow for indeterminacy and found situations. Each Character is constructed from similar elements in fixed modules, but have differentiation in traits and features. They vary in orientation, internal spaces and function. From the entrance to the courtyard, visitors can choose from a forking path and find their moments of refreshment, play, and pause.
The winning project designed by HWKN, Wendy is an experiment that tests how far the boundaries of architecture can expand to create ecological and social effect. Wendy is composed of nylon fabric treated with a ground breaking titania nanoparticle spray to neutralize airborne pollutants. During the summer of 2012, Wendy will clean the air to an equivalent of taking 260 cars off the road. Wendy will open at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City in late June.
For the Young Architects Program 2012 selection process, MoMA and MoMA PS1 invited outside experts in the field of architecture, including architects, curators, scholars, and magazine editors, to nominate the finalists from a pool of approximately 25 candidates that included both recent graduates and established architects experimenting with new styles or techniques.
Last year’s winning design by Daniel D’Oca of Interboro Partners, Holding Pattern, highlights the seven-sided polygonal shape of MoMA PS1’s courtyard with a bold canopy of ropes and sails that defines the space and provides shade without the visual distraction and spatial interference of a support system at ground level.