Since year 2000, the  MoMA and the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center present the Young Architects Program, an annual competition that invites emerging architects to design a temporary structure at the P.S.1 ’s facility in Long Island City, Queens. This has been a field for experimentation for digital manufacturing, new materials and new construction techniques -all under a tight budget-, as we saw in 2008 with the P.F.1 installation by WORKac.

A few days ago we featured this years winning proposal by MOS, a lightweight aluminum frame using recyclable parts, and saw how the economical crisis is present on the project´s conception.

But also, the other proposals by BSC Architecture, !ndie architecture, L.E.FT architects and PARA-project explore this and other social/cultural concepts on their proposals, so we decided to contact them and feature this projects so you can get the whole picture.

I´d like to thank Michel (MOS), Martin (BSC Architecture), Paul (!ndie architecture), Ziad (L.E.FT architects), Jon (PARA-project), April (P.S.1) and Meg (MoMA) for helping us out on this article.

And now, onto the proposals:

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We just got the news that MOS Architects won the competition to build a temporary installation at MoMA´s P.S.1 during this summer.

For this competition the P.S.1 invites each year a group of emerging architects to experiment with new shapes and materials, as Work AC did last year with their PF1 project.

MOS project is entitled Afterparty, a design that Micheal Meredith and Hilary Sample (MOS partners) say is meant  to honor and reflect current economic realities, by using basic materials. The main structure is a lightweight aluminum frame using recyclable parts which require minimal assembly, which will become a landmark for the neigborhood – all this on a USD$70,000 budget.

I spoke with Michael a few minutes ago and he refered to the name of the project: One thing about the “Afterparty,” as we’re calling it, is the need to look for new promiscuities after the party of a sort of high-formalism which has dominated academic discourse, and in our case it’s with the basic structural arch geometries, rough almost singular materiality and the production and interaction of “environment,” (literally cooling down the courtyard through stack effect) looking towards a more primitive state of architecture. – (See afterparty definition on Wikipedia).

The project is still under development, and we´ll keep you posted on further updates. We´ll try to do a good coverage on this as we did last year.

You can see other works from MOS previously featured on AD: Floating House and their ORDOS 100 villa.

More images of Afterparty after the break.

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Gage / Clemenceau Architects is a NY based architectural firm that deals with a wide scale of projects, from product design, commercial & residential projects to exhibition design. Also runners for the Young Architects Program @ PS1 in 2007, Gage Clemenceau´s work is motivated by the premise that architecture transcends the practice of mere building- in favor of a new and vibrant alliance between progressive technologies, new materials, context and program.

We interviewed Mark Foster Gage (G/C partner, assistant professor at Yale), and discussed about education, media, networking role of architects in contemporary society, among other topics regarding the current state of architectural practice in our second issue of AD Interviews, in a very interesting and fluid talk.

More interviews each Sunday. Please leave your feedback at the comments for future issues.

Pictures of the Gage Clemenceau Studio after the break.

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A few weeks ago we started conducting a series of video interviews with some of the most promising young architects. In times when “[...] architect may no longer mean architect“, they were asked to talk about key aspects of their role as an architect in modern society, among other topics to discuss about the direction of architecture.

Our first guest is Shohei Shigematsu (1973). He graduated from the Department of Architecture at Kyushu University in 1996, and then went to the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam. He started working at OMA in 1998, becoming an associate in 2004. He´s now the director of OMA*AMO NY, working on projects such as the CCTV Headquartes in Beijing, the design of the Whitney Museum extension in NY, the Millestain Hall at Cornell, the Stock Exchange at Shenzhen, the Torre Bicentenario in Mexico and a mixed use building in Jersey City.

Photos of OMA NY after the break.

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The april issue of Icon features 20 essential young architects. According to Icon ““young actually means young, but architect may no longer mean architect”. Architecture for Humanity (Cameron Sinclair) and Alejandro Aravena (Elemental) are good examples – also architects doing blogs…

On the list, there´s some known names such as MAD, BIG, REX and JDS (what´s with the acronyms/identity?). We are going to publish works by some of this architects during this month. In the meanwhile, enjoy the full list:

• REX
• Alejandro Aravena
• Estudio Barozzi Veiga
• FAT
• Jesko Fezer
• BIG
• Architecture For Humanity
• Serie
• Philippe Rahm
• 6a
• MAD
• Work Architecture Company
• Junya Ishigami
• JDS Architects
• Information Based Architecture
• Limited Design
• Carmody Groarke
• Dorell Ghotmeh Tane
• Sou Fujimoto
• Feld 72

Image via anArchitecture