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AN tours the 2018 Young Architects Program installation at MoMA PS1

Mirror, mirror on the wall

AN tours the 2018 Young Architects Program installation at MoMA PS1

MoMA PS1’s 2018 Young Architects Program (YAP) installation is set to open for the summer on June 28, and The Architect’s Newspaper took a behind-the-scenes look at the winning entry from Minneapolis-based Dream The Combine.

Husband-and-wife partners Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers of Dream The Combine, and Clayton Binkley of ARUP were on hand for a guided press preview of the steel-and-glass Hide & Seek, now installed in PS1’s courtyard.

View from the museum’s steps, looking towards the courtyard. (Jonathan Hilburg/AN)

This year’s YAP installation is highly technical and stark at first glance, but is still responsive at the human-scale and cuts a striking figure as the lighting conditions change overhead. Eight intersecting elements made of black steel–Carruthers co-owns a metal fabrication shop in Minneapolis–stretch across PS1’s open space, creating a layered experience for museum-goers.

The interplay of light and shadow at Hide & Seek is constantly changing. (Jonathan Hilburg/AN)

Each end of the horizontal structures on the ground-level are capped with enormous suspended mirrors, which move both in response to the wind as well as visitor participation; the mirrored-panels have had handles welded to their back.

The bending, constantly shifting viewpoints and reflections of Hide & Seek are designed to introduce a measure of spontaneity and unpredictability to the concrete-walled courtyard. Mirrors mounted high above the ground break the visual constraints of the PS1 courtyard and provide glimpses of the surrounding neighborhood to passerbys and vice versa.

Tom Carruthers, Jennifer Newsom, and Clayton Binkley. (Jonathan Hilburg/AN)

The installation’s central structure, a catwalk installed just past PS1’s entrance, turns into an infinitely-reflecting hallway as the mirrors at its ends move in the breeze. It also provides shade from the harsh summer sun via a stretched overhead canopy. As Newsom and Carruthers explained, the black fabric is intended to physically both block and filter the sun so that looking up invokes the feeling of viewing the night sky, as well as symbolically represent the poche of a drawn plan. A large-scale hammock nearby trades the plywood flooring of the catwalk for springy netting (though the installation doesn’t have a trampoline-level of bounce, AN’s editors spotted plenty of children trying to catch some air anyway).

“For the 19th year of the Young Architects Program, Dream The Combine’s provocative intervention Hide & Seek tests the effects of rapid development in Long Island City, Queens and, more broadly, the American city,” wrote Associate Curator of MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design Sean Anderson. “Conceived as a temporary site of exchange, the proposal activates the MoMA PS1 courtyard as a speculative frontier to be magnified, transgressed, and re-occupied.”

The sometimes stark installation reveals its liveliness as guests are reflected. (Jonathan Hilburg/AN)

Hide & Seek will also act as a staging area for PS1’s Warm Up concert series, and the steel sculptures overhead will reportedly be bathed in mist and light at night in response to the music below.

Hide & Seek will be on display and open to the public from June 28 until September 3. An exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art’s main building showcasing the schemes from all five finalists will run concurrently.

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