Now in its 12th edition, the commitment of the Young Architects Program at MoMA and MoMA PS1 was offering emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present innovative projects, challenging each year’s winners to develop highly innovative designs for a temporary, outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 that provided shade, seating, and water.
For the first time, MoMA and MoMA PS1 are partnering with another institution, MAXXI in Rome. The first international edition of the Young Architects Program was created. stARTT had been selected from among five European finalists to create an innovative event space in the MAXXI piazza opening in June. WHATAMI was according to the manufacturing of an artificial archipelago-hill. Smaller green areas in the garden and potentially outside the museum were generated. The hill established as a garden, injecting “green” into the concrete plateau of the museum’s outdoor space, allowing it to serve as a stage and/or parterre for concerts and other events, or as a space to rest and look at the museum itself. Large “flowers” punctuated the artificial landscape. Light, shadow, water, and sound were provided. The materials offered for the installation involve a two-fold recycling process, the supplying of the materials for the construction (straw, geo-textile, plastic) and the dismantling of the “hill” (turf, lighting).
Opened in May 2010, MAXXI was planned by Zaha Hadid and awarded Royal Institute of British Architect’s (RIBA) Stirling Prize for architecture. A place among the elite international contemporary art and architecture museums was gained.
The other YAP_MAXXI finalists were Raffaella De Simone/Valentina Mandalari (Palermo); Ghigos Ideas (Lissone/Mi, Davide Crippa, Barbara Di Prete and Francesco Tosi); Asif Khan (London, United Kingdom); and Langarita Navarro Arquitectos (Madrid, Spain, María Langarita and Víctor Navarro). According to Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator of Architecture at MAXXI, the results of this program were for three main reasons. First, the collaboration with MoMA proved as effective and productive as hoped, finally a surprising insight into the most recent research in terms of architecture, public space, and landscape was surprised. Second, an unexpected positive quality of answers by the Italian and European young (under 35) architects was discovered, involved in the project, all proposing fascinating, innovative and well developed proposals. Third, a winning proposal which incorporated a MAXXI_specific approach to the issues of ecology, recycle, and public space, was chosen.
This pavilion by Italian firm stARTT took the first international edition of the MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program and would be set outside the Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI museum in Rome this June. The modern pavilion was entitled Whatami. As inaugural winners of the YAP_MAXXI award stARTT’s installation, pavilion design showed a series of mini hills around the concrete plaza with pools of water in between. The artificial landscape would be littered with clusters of funnel-shaped canopies representing flowers. WHATAMI held in June this year at the same time as Interboro Partner’s winning design for their installation in the courtyard of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York.
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