WEAVING THE COURTYARD, WINNER OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART AND MoMA PS1’S 2016 YOUNG ARCHITECTS PROGRAM, NOW ON VIEW
Timed with the Season’s Inaugural Warm Up On Saturday, June 11
New York, June 10, 2016—Weaving the Courtyard, Escobedo Soliz Studio’s winning design for The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1’s 2016 Young Architects Program (YAP), is now on view in the MoMA PS1 courtyard. The architects, Lazbent Pavel Escobedo and Andrés Soliz, describe this year’s construction as “neither an object nor a sculpture standing in the courtyard, but a series of simple, powerful actions that generate new and different atmospheres.” Weaving the Courtyard is a site-specific architectural intervention using the courtyard’s concrete walls to generate both sky and landscape, with embankments in which platforms of soil and water suggest the appearance of a unique topography. Founded in 2011, Escobedo Soliz Studio is based in Mexico City. The structure will remain on view through August 21.
Now in its 17th edition, the Young Architects Program at MoMA and MoMA PS1 has been committed to offering emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present innovative projects, challenging each year’s winners to develop creative designs for a temporary, outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 that provides shade, seating, and water. The architects must also work within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling. Escobedo Soliz Studio, drawn from among five finalists throughout the United States and Mexico, has designed a temporary urban landscape for the 2016 Warm Up summer music series in MoMA PS1’s outdoor courtyard.
Through explorations in materials and construction techniques, demographic research, and integration from the community in the design process, Escobedo Soliz Studio designs projects that aim at a deep sense of site-specificity. They describe their theoretical framework as one in which architecture is not only registered as a product but also as a catalyst to improve a given territory. As a result, restrictions become opportunities and preexisting conditions of site, climate, and locality encourage new and practical solutions.
Escobedo Soliz Studio applied this integrated methodology to Weaving the Courtyard. Using the modulation of the remaining holes in the concrete left by the formwork ties when the walls were originally poured, the architects wove a textured canopy suspended over the courtyard, or a “cloud” made of contrasting colorful ropes. Variations of density are visible throughout the weaving, inviting visitors to interact and occupy spaces for different periods of time. The woven cloud provides shade to the visitors below while recasting MoMA PS1’s courtyard in a vivid web. A reflective wading pool quietly stands at the back of the courtyard, allowing visitors to cool off in fresh water. In addition, a mist room allows visitors a momentary escape in which the boundaries between architecture and environment are blurred. As most of the building materials will be largely unaltered by the construction process, they will be re-used at the close of summer by a number of local companies.
The other finalists for this year’s MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program were Los Angeles-based First Office (Andrew Atwood and Anna Neimark), Ultramoderne from Providence, Rhode Island (Yasmin Vobis and Aaron Forrest), COBALT OFFICE in Houston (Andrew Colopy and Robert Booth), and Frida Escobedo from Mexico City. An exhibition of the five finalists’ proposed projects will be on view at MoMA over the summer, organized by Sean Anderson, Associate Curator, with Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA.
Bloomberg Philanthropies has supported the Young Architects Program since 2007. MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Modern Art are thrilled to announce that this lead sponsorship has been extended for three years, enabling YAP to thrive and excite audiences through summer 2018.
