The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 announce the opening of Wendy, the HWKN (Hollwich Kushner)-designed winner of the annual Young Architects Program (YAP) in New York. Now in its 13th 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. HWKN, drawn from among five finalists, designed a temporary urban architecture for the 2012 Warm Up summer music series in MoMA PS1’s outdoor courtyard which begins July 7, 2012.
“Architecture is entering a new period where buildings have personality, rights, and responsibility.” HWKN Co-principal Matthias Hollwich said. “Wendy is testing these grounds on a social, ecological, and humanistic level.”
The project, Wendy, opening to the public at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City on July 1, 2012, is an experiment that tests how far the boundaries of architecture can expand to create ecological and social effect. Wendy is composed of fabric treated with a ground breaking titania nanofilm 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’s boundary is defined by tools like shade, wind, rain, music, and visual identity to reach past the confines of physical limits. Spiky fabric arms shoot out blasts of cool air, music, and water (via cannons and mists) to create social zones throughout the courtyard.
Wendy sits far enough away from the stage used for the annual Warm Up events to let the concerts go on unimpeded, but close enough to the entrance to create a filter and initial impact to visitors. It bridges over the walls into the large and small courtyards of MoMA PS1.
Wendy features a simple, inexpensive construction system: the scaffold is deployed efficiently to create a 56’ x 56’ x 46’ volume to form the largest surface area possible.
“Wendy is the perfect synergy of architectural aesthetics, systems efficiency and structural creativity,” Hauke Jungjohann, director at Knippers Helbig, Wendy’s structural engineering consultant, commented. “The magic of Wendy lies in the usage of something simple like a scaffolding system and reinventing its usage so that something new appears that has never been seen before.”
In addition to Knippers Helbig, structural engineers on the project, the Wendy project was assisted by PURETi (air-purifying surface treatment), Cristal Global (titania dioxide), SFDS (general contractor), SAFWAY (scaffolding provider), Krinner Ground Screws (foundations), Dornbracht (water systems), Davis & Warshow (water and technology), Big Ass Fans (fans), Transsolar (climate engineering), Dazian (custom sewing), Bo-Tex (fabric), Art Domantay (production consultant), Bruce Mau Design (graphic identity), Soho Repographics (printing), 2x4 (merchandise design), Pentagram (merchandise design) and Supima Cotton (merchandise materials), and a team of amazing volunteers.
The other finalists for this year’s MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program were AEDS|Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio (Ammar Eloueini, Paris, France/New Orleans, LA), Cameron Wu (Cambridge, MA), Ibañez Kim Studio (Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim, Cambridge, MA), and UrbanLab (Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn, Chicago, IL).
An exhibition of the five finalists' proposed projects will be on view at MoMA over the summer, organized by Pedro Gadanho, Curator, with Whitney May, Department Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition will also feature the five finalists from YAP MAXXI in Rome on view now, in conjunction with the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, and YAP Chile in Santiago which will be on view in December, in conjunction with the organization CONSTRUCTO. In 2013, the YAP International program will expand to Istanbul with a recently announced collaboration with Istanbul Modern.
