MoMA – Young Architects Program

Earlier this year The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 announced Escobedo Solíz Studio as the winner of the annual Young Architects Program (YAP) in New York.

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 Solíz Studio, drawn from among five finalists, will design a temporary urban landscape for the 2016 Warm Up summer music series in MoMA PS1’s outdoor courtyard.

The winning project, Weaving the Courtyard, opens at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City in early June. The architects 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. A reflective wading pool will stand at the back of the courtyard allowing visitors to cool off in fresh water.

Using the modulation of the holes existing in the concrete by the formwork ties when the walls were originally poured, the architects will then weave a textured canopy suspended over the courtyard, or a “cloud” made of contrasting yet colorful ropes.

Variations of density will be visible throughout the weaving, inviting visitors to interact and occupy spaces for different periods of time. The woven cloud will provide shade to the visitors below while recasting the courtyard in a bright colored web. As the materials will be largely unaltered by the construction process, they can be re-used at the close of summer.

Founded in 2011, Escobedo Solíz Studio is based in Mexico City and is made up Lazbent Pavel Escobedo and Andres Solíz. Through explorations in materials and construction techniques, demographic research, and the integration from the community in the design process, Escobedo Solíz 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 where restrictions become opportunities and preexistent conditions of site, climate, and locality should encourage new and practical solutions.

“This year’s finalists of the Young Architects Program explored a range of approaches, materials and scales to effectively question the MoMA PS1 courtyard as an arena for escape. Escobedo Solíz’s ingenious proposal speaks to both the ephemerality of architectural imagery today but also to the nature of spatial transactions more broadly.

From the evocative woven canopy that will “surprise” visitors overhead to a reflective wading pool, Weaving the Courtyard sensitively brings together elements of MoMA-PS1’s Warm Up Series with an exuberant collection of zones and atmospheres” said Sean Anderson, Associate Curator in MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design.

The other finalists for this year’s MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program were First Office (Andrew Atwood and Anna Neimark), Ultramoderne (Yasmin Vorbis and Aaron Forrest), COBALT OFFICE (Andrew Colopy and Robert Booth), and Frida Escobedo.

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.