Published Friday, January 22, 2010.
ON VIEW JUNE 25 THROUGH SEPTEMBER IN THE MoMA PS1 COURTYARD
The architectural firm Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu (SO -
IL), winner of the eleventh annual MoMA/MoMA PS1Young
Architects Program, present a new urban landscape for the MoMA PS1 courtyard, Pole Dance, on view June 25 through
September. Celebrating its eleventh year, the program continues its commitment to
offering emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present
innovative projects. After a successful first decade, the Young Architects
Program now focuses on designs which address sustainability, recycling, and
reuse. Pole Dance, will offer an interactive
environment for the 2010 Warm Up music series beginning July 3.
Conceived as a participatory
environment that reframes the conceptual relationship between humankind and
structure, Pole Dance is an interconnected system of poles and bungees
whose equilibrium is open to human action and environmental factors. Throughout the courtyard, groups of 25-foot-tall
poles on 12 x 12-foot grids connected by bungee cords
whose elasticity cause the poles to gently sway, create a steady ripple
throughout the courtyard space. Each grid contains a number of playful
activators, such as hammocks, pulls, misters, and rain collecting plants. An
open net covering the entire scope of the grid system provides shelter and
stabilize the movement of the poles, preventing them from exceeding a predetermined
maximum pivot. A generous series of multi-colored balls move above the net
offering mutable shade and the appearance of a communal game. Dropping down at
two points, the net surrounds a pool and a sandpit.
Pole Dance includes an
audio device that measures the motion of eight
of the fiberglass poles and converts it to sound, which is audible in the
courtyard and streamed live in 3d on
poledance.so-il.org. In the passive
state, movement is generated by wind moving the poles or net structure. As the audience begins to interact with
elements of the structure by pushing, pulling, or shaking the poles or moving
the balls or the net, modulated tones are generated, which have been specifically
composed to blend with the sonic environment and bring harmony to the
soundscape in and around MoMA PS1.
SELECTION
PROCESS
For the Young Architects
Program 2010 selection process, MoMA and MoMA PS1 invited outside experts in
the field of architecture, including architects, curators, scholars, and
magazine editors, to nominate the finalists from a pool of approximately 25 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, MoMA
Director; Kathy Halbreich, MoMA Associate
Director; Peter Reed, MoMA Senior
Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs; Barry
Bergdoll, MoMA Philip Johnson Chief Curator, Department of Architecture and
Design; and Andres Lepik, MoMA Curator, Department of Architecture and
Design, Klaus Biesenbach, MoMA PS1 Director and MoMA Chief Curator at Large; and Antoine Guerrero, MoMA PS1 Director of Operations and Exhibitions.
HISTORY
This year marks the thirteenth summer that MoMA PS1 has
hosted a combined architectural installation and music series in its outdoor
galleries, though it is only the eleventh 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 MoMA PS1 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), WORKac (2008),
and MOS (2009).
ABOUT SO - IL
Combining a host of
experience from the worlds of museum architecture, academia, corporate architecture,
and the hospitality industry, SO - IL is
a small studio with a global reach. Founders Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu
set up their Brooklyn-based studio in 2007 to be a creative catalyst, involved
at all scales and all stages of the architectural process to develop singular,
beautiful and functional solutions.
SO
- IL's
recent projects include a house for designer Ivan Chermayeff in upstate New York; a shell-shaped wedding chapel in Nanjing, China;
a museum for contemporary art near The Hague; as
well as a project space for Kukje Gallery in Seoul. They are one of five finalists in an
international competition for architects under the age of 35 to design student
housing in Athens, Greece.
The 2010 Young Architects Program is sponsored by Bloomberg. Additional funding is provided by Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation, Jeffrey and Michèle Klein, Agnes Gund, and The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.