MoMA and P.S.1 Announce Young Architect Winner: Public Farm One

The Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center announced the winner of the ninth annual MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program: WORK Architecture Company from New York. The purpose of the program is to provide emerging young talent in architecture with the chance to prepare and present architectural solutions for a specific site. This year, five finalists selected by a closed nomination process were asked to present an urban landscape for the large entrance courtyard of P.S.1, with the allotted project budget of $70,000. Essential to the design were elements of shade, water, seating, and bar areas. WORK Architecture Company's winning landscape, PF1 (Public Farm One), will be on view in P.S.1's outdoor courtyard starting June 26, and will serve as an interactive environment for the 2008 Warm Up summer music series.

PF1 (Public Farm One) is an urban farm concept that evokes the look of a flying carpet landing in the P.S.1 courtyard. Constructed from large cardboard tubes, its top surface will be a working farm, blooming with a variety of vegetables and plants. The structure will create a textured, colorful, and constantly changing surface in contrast with P.S.1's angular concrete and gravel courtyard. PF1 will work as an interactive bridge between outside and inside, creating multiple zones of activity including swings, fans, sound effects, innovative seating areas, and a refreshing pool at its center. The installation will be a living structure made from inexpensive and sustainable materials recyclable after its use at P.S.1.

In addition to WORK Architecture Company, the other finalists are Matter Architecture Practice (New York), MONAD Architects (Miami), su11 architecture + design (New York), and THEM/Lynch+Crembil (New York). An exhibition of the designs, organized by Andres Lepik, Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, will be presented in MoMA's Louise Reinhardt Smith Gallery from July 15 to October 20, 2008.

Mr. Bergdoll says, "Thirty years after Rem Koolhaas's published Delirious New York, the influential manifesto which celebrated the often unlikely and hybrid mixture of functions in the city's huge buildings and dense districts, Amale Andraos and Dan Wood of WORK Architecture Company bring us the improbable merger of a flying carpet and a farmer's market, a cultivated and cultivatable piece of infrastructure that is a timely comment on issues from post-industrialization to sustainability. Here, the productive garden meets the art gallery, and the urban schoolyard acquires greenery."

"Receiving this extraordinarily seductive visual version of a farm at P.S.1 struck deep into my rural roots. I own a farm in South Dakota, and my neighbors are very excited about coming to New York City this summer to see the urban competition!" states P.S.1 Director Alanna Heiss.

WORK Architecture Company founders, Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, describe the experience of their installation: "PF1 is an architectural and urban manifesto to engage play and reinvent our cities, and our world, once again."

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