The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 have announced the five finalists for next year’s 20th annual Young Architects Program (YAP). The finalists are each invited to propose an installation design for PS1’s outdoor courtyard in Long Island City, Queens. The winning proposal will be revealed in early 2019 and installed next summer.

The selection below hints at MoMA’s commitment to showcasing forward-thinking architects who use eye-catching design, strategic planning, and social media to garner global influence. Not only do these teams create innovative spaces and experiences, but they incorporate imaginative materials and movement into every project they pursue. 

Meet the finalists below:

Pedro & Juana
Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss
Mexico City

This Mexican design duo has made major splashes in the architecture world since establishing their firm in 2012. Many of their projects feature furniture-driven designs, as seen in their interior public space installation, Dear Rudolph, for the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial. The pair met in 2005 while attending SCI-Arc and formed their practice years later. Not only do they design their own furnishings and fixtures for many of their projects, but they incorporate art and whimsy into every piece. For the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, Pedro & Juana created a festive and colorful ceiling full of lanterns and planters within the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Low Design Office (LOWDO)
DK Osseo-Asare
State College, Pennsylvania

DK Osseo-Asare of the Austin, Texas-based firm LOWDO explores the links between sustainability, technology, and geopolitics. Together with his design partner, Ryan Bollom, the young practitioner designs eco-friendly family homes and living systems. In 2017, they created the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP), a transnational project that helps bolster maker ecosystems in Africa by teaching students and young professionals how to reuse recycled materials. One of the firm’s biggest projects includes designing and planning the new towns of Koumbi City in Ghana and Anam City in Nigeria.

Oana Stanescu & Akane Moriyama
New York

Romanian architect Oana Stanescu is a founding partner of the New York–based design firm, Family, and cofounder of the Friends of +Pool nonprofit. Her work in architecture features a multidisciplinary approach, which can be seen in the ambitious design of the world’s first floating pool and Family’s 2013 stage design for Kanye West’s Yeezus tour. Stanescu recently stepped out to start a practice under her own name, taking her extensive experience working on exhibition design, public housing, and commercial projects, as well as urban development, with her. She’s has held teaching positions at MIT and Columbia University GSAPP, and served as a critic at Yale and Harvard. 

Stockholm-based artist and designer Akane Moriyama weaves the fields of architecture and textile together in her work. After studying at both the Kyoto University of Technology in Japan and the Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Sweden, she began incorporating the practices of dying, knitting, sewing, and printing into her projects. In 2013, she won the Center for American Architecture and Design’s competition CURTAINS, installing a large-scale prism made of billowy, sheer drapes in a courtyard at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been shown widely from Tokyo to Venice.

Matter Design
Brandon Clifford
Boston

Matter Design, led by director and cofounder Brandon Clifford, isn’t afraid to experiment. The Boston-based design/research studio regularly publishes architectural research into new fabrication techniques but also combines the theoretical with the practical in using those same techniques to create products. This synthesis of research and practice is at the heart of Matter Design; for example, take The Cannibal’s Cookbook, a guidebook for constructing walls from interlocking pieces of scrap masonry, and Cyclopean Cannibalism, a real-world realization of a “recipe” from the book. Carving, stacking, and discovering new twists on ancient craft techniques have driven much of Matter Design’s research. The studio was also recognized with an Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers in 2013.

TO
Carlos Facio and Jose G. Amozurrutia
Mexico City

To TO founders Carlos Facio and Jose G. Amozurrutia, the line between art and architecture was meant to be blurred. TO, a small, three-year-old Mexico City–based practice, regularly blends hand-crafting with architectural ideas. For their 2016 Hermés Pavilion in Milan, the studio collaborated with Taller Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo to abstract one element of a typical building—the colonnade—into a spiraling structure made solely of brick piers. The resultant interplay of light and shadow was just as important to the project as the columns themselves, demonstrating the studio’s attention to architecture’s more ethereal qualities.

Past YAP winners include Dream the Combine (2018), Jenny Sabin (2017), and Escobedo Soliz Studio (2016).