Party Wall at MoMA PS1

Project Details

Project Description

[updated description]

FROM THE ARCHITECTS:

Party Wall is the winning design in MoMA PS1’s 2013 Young Architects Program annual competition. Answering a brief that asks for shade, seating, and water, for Saturday “Warm-Up” Parties, as well as temporary seating for week-day lectures and film screenings, Party Wall acts as storage device for 200 removable benches.

The true technical definition of Party Wall is intended: a wall shared between different users. Weaving together the “bones” and “blanks” that are the by-product of eco-friendly skateboard company Comet Skateboards, Party Wall creates a porous façade that is inhabitable at a range of scales. At its feet, a series of pools is fed via a gravity-operated fountain. Ballasted by glowing water weights and using left-over steel angle, the structure engages both the urban scale and the scale of the courtyard.

Party Wall is a vertical shade that creates space by the shadow that it casts; that acts as a stage-set for a series of micro-performances, and that sheds its skin in order to accommodate those events. It provokes the question: Does it say something? And if so, what does it say? In fact, it does not say anything in itself, it says something only in relation to the ground and the sun, and even then, says little, except what it would like to be: a WALL.

[previous description]

FROM MoMA PS1:

The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 announce CODA (Caroline O’Donnell, Ithaca, NY) as the winner of the annual Young Architects Program (YAP) in New York. Now in its 14th edition, the Young Architects Program at MoMA and MoMA PS1 is 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. CODA, drawn from among five finalists, will design a temporary urban landscape for the 2013 Warm Up summer music series in MoMA PS1’s outdoor courtyard.

The winning project, Party Wall, opening at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City in late June, is a pavilion and flexible experimental space that uses its large-scale, linear form to provide shade for the Warm Up crowds, in addition to other functions.

The porous façade is affixed to a tall self-supporting steel frame that is balanced in place with large fabric containers filled with water, and clad with a screen of interlocking wooden elements donated by Comet, an Ithaca-based manufacturer of eco-friendly skateboards.

The lower portion of the Party Wall’s façade is capable of shedding its “exterior,” as 120 panels can be detached from the structure and used as benches and communal tables during Warm Up and other diverse events and programs such as lectures, classes, performances, and film screenings.

A shallow stage of reclaimed wood weaves around Party Wall’s base to create a series of micro-stages for performances of varying types and scales. At various locations under the structure, pools of water serve as refreshing cooling stations that can also be covered to provide additional staging space or a shaded area from the direct sunlight.

Party Wall’s steel-angle structure is ballasted by water-filled “pillows” made of polyester base fabric that will be lit at night to produce a luminous effect. Party Wall acts as an aqueduct by carrying a stream of water along the top of the structure. The water is projected from the structure, via a pressure-tank, into a fountain that feeds a misting station and a series of pools.

The other finalists for this year’s MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program were Leong Architects (New York, NY, Dominic Leong, Chris Leong); Moorhead & Moorhead (New York, NY, Granger Moorhead, Robert Moorehead); TempAgency (Charlottesville, VA, and Brooklyn, NY, Leena Cho, Rychlee Espinosa, Matthew Jull, Seth McDowell); and French 2D (Boston, MA, and Syracuse, NY, Anda French, Jenny French).