Each winter the Museum of Modern Art’s Queens outpost, PS1, chooses an up-and-coming designer to create a temporary installation in its courtyard. These have ranged from a fortress of used skateboards to towers of bricks grown from fungus. This year, it’s a colourful crocheted net.
Mexico City-based Escobedo Solíz Studio have been selected as the winners of this year’s Young Architects Program. In early winter, the designers will be erecting a gigantic canopy named Weaving the Courtyard, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.
Using existing holes in the concrete walls of the museum’s plaza, the designers will knit a “cloud” of colourful ropes. These will vary in density throughout the courtyard and provide shade as well as a graphic pattern that contrasts with the sky. Museum-goers who need to cool off even more during steamy New York City days can head to a wading pool in one corner of the installation (since it will be summer in the US).
While an Instagram-friendly idea is important for the anointed winners of the Young Architects Program, addressing the environmental issues around the installation is one of the most critical components of the contest. In that way, Weaving the Courtyard is perhaps the most sensitive to its site. By using the holes in the concrete that are left over from when the cement was originally poured, and re-using the rope for another purpose afterwards, there will be pretty much no impact at all, and no wasted materials. This is a signature move by the designers, who are known for a beautiful recycled wood chapel Mexico.
Watch the designers explain their idea in this video, then plan your trip to MoMA PS1 to see it in person — the installation will open at the museum in June.
[MoMA]