In the grand tradition of MoMA PS1's Young Architects Program winners, Andrés Jaque's plan for "COSMO" addresses an ecological need through installation architecture. While 2014's "Hy-Fi" by the living explored organic bricks and 2012's "Wendy" by HWKN addressed airborne pollution, Jaque has set his targets on something that is apparently much more political: water. This article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "The Politics of Water: Andrés Jaque on His 2015 MoMA PS1 YAP Winning Design," examines how Jaque hopes to turn his installation into a political talking point.
At first glance, Bill Gates’s robotic Janicki Omniprocessor and Andrés Jaque’s winning proposal for the 2015 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP) share a similar goal—they each tackle the problem of global water scarcity, which has become exacerbated by climate change, political strife, and a host of other factors. But while the Omniprocessor looks like a cement factory in miniature, Jaque’s project melds its profoundly social objective—to change the way we understand contemporary water infrastructure—to an almost psychedelic aesthetic.
