WORKac. Photographed by K.Cilento

Last September, we attended MoMA’s PS 1 Open Studio event to catch a glimpse of the collaborative projects of five  multidisciplinary teams focusing on how to re-think, re-organize and re-energize the concept of an American suburb in the wake of the foreclosure crisis.   When we visited, the teams were in the final stages of their designs and preparing to send their visions to the Museum of Modern Art for the exhibition “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream.  One of the team’s we talked with was WORK Architecture Company about their Nature-City proposal, an extension of the suburb whichhas been designed in an abstracted way to serve as a plug in model to create cities elsewhere.

More about Nature-City after the break. read more »

For the last 12 years, the MoMA and the P.S.1 have invited a group of emerging architects to compete for the opportunity to design and construct a summer installation within MoMA PS1’s courtyard as part of their Young Architects Program (you can check the 2012 short list here).

As of last year, the program started an international version in two countries: Chile (Color Shadows, at the Matucana 100 Cultural Center – YAP_CONSTRUCTO) and Italy (wHATAMI, at the MAXXI museum in Rome, YAP_MAXXI).

The winning project of the Chilean version, designed by Eduardo Castillo, was open during the 2010 summer (Jan-Feb, southern hemisphere), hosting a series of cultural events and music sessions, just like the P.S.1 in Queens.

The project, Color Shadows, consists of a series of roofs structured from wooden posts that, together with fabric, created a topographic relief, more than covering the patio, spatially contained it. This dynamic structure filters the light and is constantly changing during the day. This dynamic condition can be seen thanks to this video by architectural photographer Cristobal Palma.

More videos by Cristobal Palma at ArchDaily:

• Nicanor Parra Library (Mathias Klotz)
• El Porvenir Kindergarten (Giancarlo Mazzanti)
• Flor del Campo School (Giancarlo Mazzanti + Felipe Mesa)
• Sports Facilities (Giancarlo Mazzanti + Plan B)

Cristobal Palma (1974, Oxford, UK): Based in Santiago, Chile, Cristobal’s work spans architecture, urban and documentary photography. He studied at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA), and his work has been published in numerous titles internationally, with recent commissions by: The New York Times, Monocle, Wallpaper, Domus, Dwell and Architectural Digest. He lives in Santiago, Chile, and works both with architects in Chile and abroad.

PS 1

This weekend, we had the opportunity to attend the Open Studio event at MoMA’s PS1.  As we mentioned earlier, this project posed the daunting question of how to re-think, re-organize and re-energize the concept of an American suburb in the wake of the foreclosure crisis.  As MoMA’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Barry Bergdoll explains, “Projects will aim to challenge cultural assumptions concerning home ownership and associated settlement patterns, such as suburban sprawl, and assist the public in contemplating a potentially different future for housing and cities. The workshop and exhibition are premised on reframing the current crisis as an opportunity, an approach that is in keeping with the fundamental American ethos where challenging circumstances engender innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. It is our hope that new paradigms of architecture and regional and transportation planning become the silver lining in the crisis of home ownership.” The five multidisciplinary teams chose five different American suburbs to explore, and this Saturday, we jumped from Oregon to Florida, to Illinois, to California and New Jersey, to observe their five quite different solutions.

Check out our preview of the teams’ work-in-progress projects which will be exhibited at the MoMA this February. read more »