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YAP: The Latest Architecture and News

Down to Earth Practice: How Some Japanese Architects Have Taken their Offices to the Streets

As the discourse about the way we work continues past the original pandemic concern and past the hybrid, remote, or what was once called traditional office space; employers and employees alike are still revisiting mental comfort requirements of a post-pandemic worker. While there are many types of work environments and worker needs that have to be addressed separately (besides the white-collar or knowledge worker), from a design and policies front; one particular, newborn model has been popping up in recent years, thus far seen through some unique, smallscale yet norm challenging Japanese offices. 

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Dream the Combine's Jennifer Newsom & Tom Carruthers Win MoMA PS1's 2018 Young Architects Program

Hide & Seek by Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers of Dream The Combine, in collaboration with Clayton Binkley of ARUP, has been selected as the winner of the 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program. Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers were selected from a shortlist of five young firms unveiled in November.

Inspired by “the jostle of relationships found in the contemporary city,” Hide & Seek will feature a landscape of kinetic, responsive elements that connect the courtyards of the MoMA PS1 site to its surrounding streets.

5 Emerging Firms Shortlisted for 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program

The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA P.S.1 have announced the five finalists of their 2018 Young Architects Program (YAP).

Now in it’s 18th year, the competition was founded to offer emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design a temporary, outdoor installation within the walls of the P.S.1 courtyard for MoMA’s annual summer “Warm-Up” series. Architects are challenged to develop creative designs that provide shade, seating and water, while working within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling.

The finalists include:

5 Firms Shortlisted for 2017 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program

MoMA P.S.1 has named five finalists competing in the 2017 Young Architects Program (YAP).

Now in it’s 17th year, the competition was founded to offer emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design a temporary, outdoor installation within the walls of the P.S.1 courtyard for MoMA’s annual summer “Warm-Up” series. Architects are challenged to develop creative designs that provide shade, seating and water, while working within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling.

Escobedo Soliz Studio Wins MoMA PS1's 2016 Young Architects Program

Mexico City-based Escobedo Soliz Studio has been named the winner of MoMA and MoMA PS1's annual Young Architects Program (YAP) in New York - now in its 17th edition. Selected over four other finalists, the winning project, Weaving the Courtyard is “neither an object nor a sculpture standing in the courtyard, but a series of simple, powerful actions that generate new and different atmospheres," says the architect. It will serve as a "temporary urban landscape" for the 2016 Warm Up summer music series in MoMA PS1’s outdoor courtyard.

"Weaving the Courtyard is a site-specific architectural intervention using the courtyard’s concrete walls to generate both sky and landscape, with embankments in which platforms of soil and water suggest the appearance of a unique topography," says MoMA.

2016 YAP P.S.1 Shortlist

MoMA P.S.1 has announced five finalists to compete in the 2016 Young Architects Program (YAP). Now in it’s 16th edition, the competition will challenge a group of emerging architects to design a temporary installation within the walls of the P.S.1 courtyard for MoMA’s annual summer “Warm-Up” series.

The 2016 shortlist includes First Office / Andrew Atwood + Anna Neimark (Los Angeles, CA); ESCOBEDO + SOLIZ / Lazbent Pavel Escobedo Amaral + Andres Soliz Paz (Mexico City, Mexico); ULTRAMODERNE / Yasmin Vobis + Aaron Forrest (Providence, RI); COBALT OFFICE / Andrew Colopy and Robert Booth (Houston, TX); and Frida Escobedo (Anzures, Mexico). The winners will be announced in early 2016.

Previous winners include COSMO (Andrés Jaque), The Living (Hy-Fi), CODA (Party Wall), Interboro Partners (Holding Pattern), Work AC (Public Farm 1), MOS (Afterparty) and SO-IL (Pole Dance).

MoMA Appoints Sean Anderson as Associate Curator of Architecture and Design

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has appointed Sean Anderson as the new Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design. Under the direction of Chief Curator Martino Stierli, Anderson will be responsible for "overseeing MoMA's Issues in Contemporary Architecture exhibition series, assisting in curatorial supervision of the Young Architects Program (YAP) both at MoMA PS1 and with international partners, and serving as the primary liaison to architecture communities both locally in New York as well as globally." His appointment is now effective. 

“Your Reflection” Selected as Winning Proposal of YAP_Constructo Chile

Chilean architects, Guillermo Hevia García and Nicolás Urzúa Soler, have been selected as the winners of the 2015 Young Architects Program (YAP) Constructo in Chile for their installation proposal, “Your Reflection." The installation will be inaugurated in March 2016 in Santiago, and aims “to build an uncertain experience, a situation of estrangement” so that the visitor is waiting to see “what is going to surprise them in the next place."

Along with New York, Istanbul, Rome and Seoul, Yap Contructo (Chile) is one of five versions of the Young Architects Program (YAP), carried out by MoMA and MoMA PS1, which aims to “support research in innovative design and promote emerging talent.”

Learn more about the proposal after the break. 

Andrés Jaque Cleans New York's Water with COSMO

A photo posted by Andrés Jaque (@andres_jaque) on

This week COSMO begun its venture to filter more than 42,000 gallons of New York City water during the course of MoMA PS1's Summer Warm Up series. The 16th installation built as part of the annual Young Architect's Program (YAP), COSMO is a portable water purifier designed by Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation to combat the world's clean water crisis while serving an animated backdrop to PS1's party atmosphere.

An interview with Jaque, after the break.

How MoMA PS1 Yap Winner Andrés Jaque Plans to Politicize Water

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.

MoMA PS1 YAP 2015 Runner-up: Roof Deck / Erin Besler

Despite Andrés Jaque of Office of Political Innovation emerging as the winner of the 2015 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP), his competitors put up quite a fight. One of this year's five shortlisted proposals, Erin Besler's Roof Deck breathes life into arguably the most overlooked aspect of architecture - the roof - by injecting it with an active public program and making it a vessel for summer celebration.

Read on after the break for more on Besler's proposal.

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Andrés Jaque Named 2015 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP) Winner

Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation’s project COSMO has been selected by the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 as winner of Young Architects Program’s (YAP) 16th edition in New York. Scheduled to open in late June, just in time for MoMA PS1’s 2015 Warm Up summer music, COSMO will serve as a “moveable artifact” with a mission to provide clean water for the world’s population.

“This year’s proposal takes one of the Young Architects Program’s essential requirements - providing a water feature for leisure and fun - and highlights water itself as a scarce resource,” said Pedro Gadanho, Curator in MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design. “Relying on off-the-shelf components from agro-industrial origin, an exuberant mobile architecture celebrates water-purification processes and turns their intricate visualization into an unusual backdrop for the Warm Up sessions.”

2015 YAP Istanbul Modern Shortlist

Istanbul Modern has announced five finalists to compete in the 2015 Young Architects Program (). Now in it’s 2nd edition, the competition will challenge a group of emerging architects to design a temporary installation within the confines of Istanbul Modern's courtyard that will host a series of events and visitors throughout the summer of 2015.

2015 YAP P.S.1 Shortlist

MoMA P.S.1 has announced five finalists to compete in the 2015 Young Architects Program (YAP). Now in it’s 16th edition, the competition will challenge a group of emerging architects to design a temporary installation within the walls of the P.S.1 courtyard for MoMA’s annual summer “Warm-Up” series.

The 2015 shortlist includes Office for Political Innovation (Andres Jaque; NY), brillhart architecture (Jacob Brillhart; Miami, FL), Erin Besler (LA, CA), The Bittertang Farm (Michael Loverich; NY), Studio Benjamin Dillenburger (Benjamin Dillenburger and Michael Hansmeyer; ONT, Canada). The winners will be announced in early 2015.

Previous winners include The Living (Hy-Fi), CODA (Party Wall), Interboro Partners (Holding Pattern), Work AC (Public Farm 1), MOS (Afterparty) and SO-IL (Pole Dance).

Orizzontale Illuminates Outdoor Theater with Recycled Keg Wall at MAXXI

Orizzontale, winners of the 2014 Young Architects Program (YAP), have transformed the MAXXI’s piazza Boetti with an “8 1/2” meter-tall mobile theater made of timber and recycled beer kegs. Built in just four weeks, the installation created an “urban room” for the museum’s Play with YAP events program that provided an inhabitable podium illuminated by a translucent wall of lighted plastic beer kegs for a series of concerts and events.

More about Orizzontale's design, after the break. 

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VIDEO: How The Living's Mushroom Tower Was Built

Our friends at The Creators Project have shared with us an awesome video of the latest MoMA PS1 installation: Hy-Fi. Designed by The Living, who have - in a fascinating move - recently been acquired by Autodesk, the tower's many organic, biodegradable bricks are grown from a mushroom root in five days, with no energy required and no carbon emissions. In fact, the tower will be composted after MoMA PS1's summer program is over. Learn more about this ingenious tower from the creator David Benjamin in the video above. And check out more images of the tower after the break.

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Hy-Fi, The Organic Mushroom-Brick Tower Opens At MoMA's PS1 Courtyard

Last night, the organic brick structure known as 'Hy-Fi' opened in the courtyard of MoMA's PS1 space in New York. Designed by David Benjamin of New York architects The Living, the tower was designed as part of MoMA's Young Architects Program, and its construction centers around the use of an innovative building material: organic, biodegradable bricks consisting of no more than farm waste and a culture of fungus that is grown to fit a brick-shaped mold.

Acting as the centerpiece for MoMA's Warm Up music festival on Saturdays throughout the Summer, the temporary structure will provide shade, seating and water until September 7th. Read on after the break for more on the design.

Arup Engineers Explain: How the MoMA PS1 YAP Winners Grew Ten Thousand Mushroom Bricks

This year's MoMA PS1's Young Architects Program opens tomorrow (you can see the schedule of events here). Find out how the innovative winning design (a tower of fungal bricks), by The Living's David Benjamin, was tested and built with this article, originally posted on as "Engineering a mushroom tower".

Soft, spongy, and delicious on pizza, mushrooms have approximately as much to do with structural engineering as alligators or lawnmowers. Or so we thought, until architect David Benjamin of New York firm The Living walked into our offices with a brick grown from fungi.

This brick was the key to his concept for an entry to MoMA PS1’s Young Architects Program competition. Every year, the museum commissions a designer to build a centerpiece for its popular outdoor Warm Up concert series.

If architectural design competitions are where brave, innovative ideas rise to the top, The Living’s mushroom tower (official name: Hy-Fi) checked all the right boxes. In addition to the novelty factor, mushroom bricks offer a host of sustainability benefits. The raw materials needed to produce them — mushrooms and corn stalks (waste material from farms) that the spores feed on — are as eco-friendly as they come. Bricks can be grown in just five days, and the process produces no waste or carbon emissions. When the structure is taken down at the end of the summer, they can be composted and turned into fertilizer.