Archinect is pleased to announce the PS1 People's Choice Award, an honor bestowed upon the PS1 competition entry that is selected by public vote as the architectural community's favorite.
In 2000 the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 launched the Young Architects Program (YAP), an annual competition to design and build an installation in the iconic triangular courtyard of MoMA PS1. Although MoMA's goals for the competition are rather modestly stated as to "provide visitors with an outdoor recreational area for the summer... making the best use of the pre-existing space and available materials," the competition quickly became a venue for architectural innovation and a platform from which practices such as SHoP, ROY, and nArchitects stepped into the big league.
Now in its twelfth incarnation, the PS1 YAP competition is beginning to show signs that its competitors have outgrown their hosts as an increasing number of entrants feel compelled to look beyond the creation of shade and add new dimensions of relevance to their proposals. Mirroring the larger mood of contemporary North American architecture, there's a growing tension between entries that exhibit beautiful formal tactics, like MOS' sublime techno-snuffaluffagus and SO-IL's Pole Dance, and those which dwell on strategies such as Work AC's garden of community engagement. The last few years of the PS1 competition has batted a central question back and forth: should architecture aspire to more than a good dance party?
This is a question for all of us, not just the MoMA jury. The official winner is still decided by Glenn Lowry, Klaus Biesenbach, and a rotating panel of experts, but as of 2011 Archinect is offering the (completely unofficial) PS1 People's Choice Award. Our hope is that by opening up the competition to a wider vote we can catalyze a healthy discussion about what's hot and what's not (other than the NYC summer sun).
Below you will find the 2011 competition entries in alphabetical order. Under each project header we've included a link to the full proposal on our sister site Bustler as well as three essential images to create a consistent basis for judging. These images are one on-the-ground view, one plan, and one diagram or detail that explains the concept of the project.
Review each project before casting your vote. You may vote once and only once. If you're feeling generous with your time, please leave a comment on this page explaining what motivated your decision. Voting closes on March 11th, 12pm EST. The winner will be announced on March 11th.
formlessfinder: Bag Pile
"Bag pile provides an opportunity for visitors to lose the courtyard and immerse themselves in a new world, exploring spaces that range from large collective interiors designed specifically for the Warm Up events to small, intimate spaces perfect for individual occupation on a summer day. And because these spaces are crated with lose materials, the project remains dynamic, never fixed into a final form. Bag Pile thus offers not only a depth and variety of experience not yet seen in the PS1 YAP but a radically new understanding of the relationship between architectural space, material, and form."
View the full project presentation on Bustler
IJP Corporation Architects: Ghost House
"GhostHouse is a light-weight installation with a counter-intuitive material structure exuding an aura of mystery and wonder. 97% of the proposal is simply rope. GhostHouse is about domesticity. It expresses the tension in our minds between the bustling excitement of the contemporary spaces we live in, and our persistent yearning for a log cabin in the woods -- a timeless, traditional house."
View the full project presentation on Bustler
Interboro Partners: Holding Pattern
"Holding Pattern is a new take on recycling... We talked to as many of MoMA PS1's neighbors as we could… [and] simply asked each one: is there something you need that we could design, use in the courtyard during the Warm Up, then donate in the fall, once the Warm Up is over? The result is an eclectic collection of objects-including benches, mirrors, ping-pong tables, and flood lights-that we never would have thought to include, but that both enhance the Warm Up's program, and strengthen MoMA PS1's ties to its neighborhood."
View the full project presentation on Bustler
MASS Design Group: Bottle Service
"Bottle Service, captures that summer impulse to cool off by activating the senses of the subaquatic and urban refreshment. Beneath a stream of seemingly floating and frozen forms, Bottle Service is an urban menagerie, a refracted surface, a transformative plunge unique only to this courtyard, to this borough, to this moment... Bottle Service shows architecture as an investment in communities. Creating not only added economic and social value, our proposal proves that the socially engaged and the architecturally progressive are not independent, but one and the same."
View the full project presentation on Bustler
Matter Architecture Practice
MATTER declined to participate in the PS1 People's Choice Award and will be sharing their project via their own website when they have time to update it. To make this an informed debate, we have left them out of the vote.
Voting closed on March 11th, 12pm EST.
Archinect would like to thank each of the 2011 PS1 YAP competitors for their prompt response to our inquiry.
The 2011 PS1 YAP People's Choice Award is organized solely by Archinect and has no connection to the MoMA or MoMA PS1 other than our mutual interest in fostering strong debate about architecture.
In the spirit of public debate, we ask that you use #ps1pc if you post about this award on Twitter or other social media.
![Il[LUMEN]ating; A conversation with Jenny Sabin, winner of 2017’s MoMA PS1 YAP](https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/ne/nehr5z931a3dlhra.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=355&h=210 "Il[LUMEN]ating; A conversation with Jenny Sabin, winner of 2017’s MoMA PS1 YAP")
15 Comments
mass design approach to the built space creates a bridge to the reality in which we live overwhelmed by the trash we produce, generating an array of pasterns that rescues an ethereal need for sublime shapes without interfering into the built space often in need for less.
I think formless' proposal is full of interesting and easily built possibilities. It will create spaces which are softer and less defined, making it the more appealing choice for this type of installation. I believe that for PS1 the proposal should have both a tangible construction plan (which I believe it does) and the possibility to find the finish product much more appealing than the proposal.
to be honest I'm not sure I'm a fan I am of any of the short-listed entries. That said there portfolios contained far more expressive works that shown in their PS1 entries.
Sorry but I think Interboro's proposal is an example of when less is less. From this very weak crop, I'll vote for Formlessfinder.
Also, why would Matter not participate in this?? That decision really speaks volumes.
FormlessFinder = robbed.......ps1 is about creating space and shade, not one or the other. just doing a canopy that does not define space is lame, i.e. the winner. Pole-Dance created a canopy and just having the poles there helped define a space. people gathered to the poles and interacted with them.
congrats FormlessFinder i hope you become the peoples champion.
Formless Finder is the only entry that is acting more than a glorified trellis!
Go FF!
If only formless finder had gone around to each of the neighbors and ask them the shape and volume of the things they throw away every day, then the architects could have filled those mesh arches with garbage... probably achieving leed gold at minimum. Not to mention they would have won!
My vote cannot go to a scheme that blatantly uses community/social awareness as an alibi for a weak architectural gesture. Maybe if the gesture was stronger or more unique I could accept the relatively normal methodology of architectural practice. So, no to Interboro.
Same goes for MASS Design group, though as an office this group is probably doing the best work or at least the most currently important work of any of the finalists. It is excellent that they were invited, but everyone was doubtful that they could or would win.
IGP strangley evokes the single family housing type/profile in the center of brooklyn, which as a polemical or historic argument IS interesting. What is uninteresting is the usefulness or noninterative nature of the material devices that are evoking the "ghost houses."
Matter Architecture Practice gets the integrity of not participating in an un-scripted follow up public judgement rewarded by me not cynically deriding their unwillingness to play in the sandbox.
So back to Interboro. Its good. For this year's entries, apparently that should have been enough. Next year... talk to the neighbors about their garbage.
These are all terrible. It's a shame that all of the shortlisted entries are so weak.
@MCTalbot Let's keep the commentary useful and constructive.
So far looks like the museum picked the wrong talent according to poll and by far.
What does this mean?
A-) Public can go fuck themselves
B-) Neighbor's shade is always shadier
C-) Means nothing, I am already warmed up
D-) I don't know and I don't care, I don't want to warm up to it
E-) A & C
F-) FormlessFinder
PS1 really should bring the official selection process into the light of day.
I think there need to be some alternative programs. I find the PS1 entries have gotten so....tired....
I think the winner of this competition suited for the award, that's why the people voted for them!
-Interboro had the most thoughtful but ultimately formally boring project, I'm glad they won but they need to really amp up their formal investigation.
-Formless Finder's entry feels either out of date or ahead of its time, not sure. Will be interesting to see where they go, this entry is thought provoking and I am sure they will get a PS1 soon enough. Good luck!
-IJP - I want to like it, but it is sooooo ugly! I think this was a great solution but the deployment leaves a lot to be desired.
-MASS uses a lot of buzz words (Education, Community, Recycling (said like the intro to an 80's superhero cartoon)) but ultimately I think they dont even understand what they did. Trendy and aloof at best; manipulative, hollow, and superficial at worse. All that is missing is a mention of Ecological, Green, or Sustainable somewhere, oh wait... A fitting entry for a practice that seems more interested in trends and self-promotion (who can say no to education and recycling?) than in substance.
-Matter - RESPECT!
ON PS1: I dont think they have done too badly. WORK ac's and SO IL's were good entries. I think Interboro's will work nicely with that lineage and I cannot wait to go see it.
I think us getting to vote on these is interesting as an exercise, but I dont mind the current system. Turning its selection into an American Idol is a mistake. As most things in architecture we will leave them for the wealthy, powerful, and connected designers to win as they are more likely to 'turn out the vote'.
SO:
1- PS1 still does something interesting for the profession
2- The current system (even as obscure as it is) seems mostly fair. Worse than that would be a public vote.
3- Congrats Interboro, you deserved it. Now warm me up!
Interboro presented their PS1 design at the New Museum last night. I appreciate their proposal much more now after seeing that presentation.
The architecture media has paid most of its attention to a few renderings that emphasize the form and materiality of the parabolic canopy. The more profound aspect of their proposal seems to be the appropriation of money for various objects (mirrors, furniture, ping pong table etc) that will be donated to needy community groups after the installation is dismantled. The real strength of the project lays in that understatement of formal beauty and the direct engagement with actual user groups in the community.
However, the distant relationship between the media-friendly formal gesture and the less visible social structure may be its main weakness. Last summer's design by So-IL had a similar both-sides-of-mouth composition with its flirtation with accelerometers and iphones.
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