Published Wednesday, January 28, 2009.
Model of afterparty, the winning project of the 2009 MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program, by the architectural firm MOS. The architects are Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample. © 2009 MOS
The Museum of Modern Art and
P.S.1 Contemporary
Art Center
announce the winner of the 2009 MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program: the
architectural firm MOS. This year marks the tenth
anniversary of the program, which affords emerging architectural talents the
opportunity to design and present innovative projects. Five finalists selected
by an invited nomination process were asked to present an urban landscape for
the large courtyard entrance of P.S.1, with the allotted project budget of
$70,000. The architects were required to incorporate elements of shade, water,
seating, and bar areas into a proposed project. MOS's winning
landscape, afterparty, will be on view in P.S.1's outdoor courtyard
starting June 28, and will serve as an immersive environment for the 2009
Warm Up summer music series.
Envisioned as an "urban
shelter," afterparty will serve as a cooling escape at the heart
of P.S.1's Warm Up music series. Before visitors enter the courtyard, a series
of tall hut-like "chimneys" with dark thatched skin will be visible from the
street. The interior of the conical
shelter will provide shade, similar to a Bedouin tent in which the dark textile
creates its own microclimate shielding from the summer heat. Cool air from the
thermal mass of the courtyard's shaded concrete walls and concrete water
troughs located in the center of the structure will be drawn up through a
series of cooling chimneys by induction. This will create a breeze and a
"cool down" atmosphere for the active Warm Up crowd.
In
addition to MOS (New Haven, Connecticut
and Cambridge, Massachusetts), the other
finalists are !ndie
architecture (Denver,
Colorado), Bade Stageberg
Cox (Brooklyn,
New York), L.E.FT architects (New York, New York), and PARA-project (Brooklyn,
New York). An exhibition of the five finalists' proposed
projects will be on view at MoMA over the summer. It
will be organized by Andres Lepik, Curator, Department of Architecture and
Design, The Museum of Modern Art.
Barry
Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of the Department of Architecture
and Design at MoMA, explains, "The
project proposes to deal with issues of sustainability and a return to basics,
working towards climate altering through passive means, even in the context of
an exhibition/party space in the P.S.1 courtyard. It consists of a lightweight
aluminum frame of recyclable parts clad in a weave, allowing some light and air
to circulate but at the same time shading visitors from the sunlight. Its
combination of forms includes tall, chimney-like shapes, heroic cones, and
others that are evocative at once of the vernacular village structures
world-wide and of the open ruined vaults of the Roman Forum."
Antoine Guerrero, P.S.1 Director of Operations
and Exhibitions, adds, "From the ground up, another exciting, ephemeral
transformation of our outdoor galleries will leave a lasting impression on over
50,000 summer visitors who will have the chance to cool off."
MOS
architects Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith say, "Today, we are rethinking and resituating architecture-not
only its conceptual and formal economies but also its inherent ability to
engage and produce visceral intimate environments. This project, afterparty, is a temporary urban shelter
and passive cooling station for P.S.1 and its Warm Up events, creating an
escape from the summer heat and constructing a network of large, medium, and
small cellular spaces that allow for intimacy and social formations to thrive."
SELECTION
PROCESS
For the Young Architects
Program 2009 selection process, MoMA and P.S.1 invited outside experts in the
field of architecture, including architects, curators, academics, and magazine
editors, to nominate the finalists from a pool of approximately 40 candidates
that included both recent graduates and established architects experimenting
with new styles or techniques. After
reviewing the candidates, five finalists were selected to present proposals to
a panel composed of Glenn D. Lowry,
Director; Kathy Halbreich, Associate
Director; Peter Reed, Senior Deputy
Director of Curatorial Affairs; Barry
Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator, Department of Architecture and
Design; Klaus Biesenbach, Chief
Curator, Department of Media; and Andres Lepik, Curator,
Department of Architecture and Design, The
Museum of Modern Art; and Antoine
Guerrero, Director of Operations and Exhibitions, P.S.1 Contemporary Art
Center.
HISTORY
This year marks the twelfth summer that P.S.1 has hosted
a combined architectural installation and music series in its outdoor galleries,
though it is only the tenth year of the Young Architects Program, which began
in 2000. The inaugural project was an architecturally based installation in
1998 by an Austrian artist collective, Gelatin. In 1999, Philip Johnson's DJ
Pavilion celebrated the historic affiliation of P.S.1 and MoMA. The previous
winners of the Young Architects Program are SHoP/Sharples
Holden Pasquarelli (2000), ROY (2001),
William E. Massie (2002), Tom Wiscombe /
EMERGENT (2003), nARCHITECTS (2004),
Xefirotarch (2005), OBRA (2006), Ball-Nogues (2007), and WORKac (2008).
ABOUT
MOS
MOS is an interdisciplinary practice
engaging in architecture and design through an inclusive methodology of
research, expansive collaboration, and extensive experimentation. The work
develops through research ranging from typology, digital production, structure,
material, program and use, to larger networks of social, cultural, and
environmental consideration. The scope of MOS's research constantly shifts and
expands as each individual project has the potential to engage a unique set of
parameters, specific to its condition. This process of "radical
inclusion" allows MOS to participate in design at different scales-from
product design, to private residences, to cultural institutions to large-scale
urban infrastructure.
Lead by Michael Meredith and Hilary
Sample, MOS is based in New Haven, Connecticut and Cambridge,
Massachusetts. MOS has
received the P/A award, New York Urban League Emerging Voices series, Surface magazine's Avant-Guardian, and
Architectural Record's Design Vanguard award. Current projects include a villa
for Ordos 100, Inner Mongolia, China; The Ballroom Drive-In theater, Marfa, Texas; an
inflatable factory in Newfoundland, Canada; and a Teen
Center, Lowell, Massachusetts.
Michael Meredith is an Associate Professor at the Harvard University Graduate
School of Design and Hilary Sample is an Assistant Professor at the Yale
University School of Architecture.