Every summer, the MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York (MoMA’s contemporary art outpost) turns its courtyard into a party spot where the best and most buzz-worthy bands and DJs come to serenade crowds of smartly dressed cool kids and art nerds. Each year, they commission an emerging group of young architects to transform the courtyard, selected through the Young Architects Program. The winning design becomes the centerpiece structure for the Warm Up events that happen every Saturday from July until September.This year’s winners are HWKN—Matthias Hollwich, Marc Kushner and Robert May—whose monolithic Wendy will sit in the MoMA’s courtyard emanating music, mists, and general wonder for the partiers below. But perhaps more importantly, Wendy is a structure with an ecological mission—she will clean the air at PS1, with the help of cutting-edge new materials, to an equivalent of taking 260 cars off the road.We spoke with the HWKN team to find our more about Wendy’s design and green ambitions.The Creators Project: What was the inspiration behind Wendy‘s design concept?
HWKN: Wendy’s skin is capable of removing airborne pollution from the air so we had a simple architectural equation, More = More. The more fabric we could install on the site, the more pollution we could remove. Scaffolding is the most efficient way to create area—it is an off-the-shelf and rentable system—so we designed Wendy to maximize surface square footage within a scaffolding armature.
Why did you decide to incorporate this titania nanoparticle spray into the equation? Has this material been used elsewhere recently?
We believe that the Young Architects Program is a chance to push at the boundaries of architecture. Typically, architects are on a quest to minimize the footprints of their buildings. Here we had a chance to inverse that game and make our design pro-active. The titania nanoparticles applied to Wendy’s skin let her impact the environment beyond the confines of her site and footprint.Titantia nanoparticles have been used at Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church in Rome, an Ikea in Milan and as a pilot program on the sidewalks of Malmo, Sweden—but they have never been used in a large scape textile application!What do you have running the microprograms? Does Wendy operate autonomously?
Wendy runs on its own. As soon sunlight hits the nanoparticles, a photosynthetic process kicks in and cleans the air. Beyond that, Wendy‘s job is to inspire, to show the potential of architecture, and to do that we needed to have visitors affected at the human scale. It is hard to fall in love with a scientific description of titania nanoparticles, but easy to go bonkers for a cool summer breeze on a steamy Saturday in Queens. That’s why Wendy, along with a self-perpetuating environmental loop that is powered by the sun, has fans to blast out cool air, water canons to shoot out water, and misters to douse the small courtyard in a ceaseless summer rainstorm.What inspired the spiky shape of Wendy?
First, the spiky shape is based on performance. We connected textile surfaces in the most surface-generating fashion because we want as much surface area as possible to clean as much air as possible. For the final form, we tuned Wendy into the specific form so it inspires and speaks to the people who come to party in the PS1 courtyard. We wanted to give them an architectural thrill and an image that would raise curiosity. To us, this is the power of architecture—to excite the people who use it and to give form to abstract and complicated ideas of ecology.Is it named for someone?
Our project is a storm that pushes at the boundaries of architecture. Like all strong storms, it has a name. We used the Association‘s 1967 hit Windy as the project’s theme song—it was a short leap from there to Wendy.How many Wendys would it take to clean all of New York’s air?
That is an excellent question and one that we are working on the answer to right now!What was your favorite PS1 summer installation of the past?
We loved them all! It is the constant new thinking that keeps our professional inspired!What’s Wendy’s favorite kind of music?
We will have to talk to Wendy after the Warm Up events of 2012 and see which one of the amazing DJs she liked the most. I will let you know as soon she tells us!
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HWKN: Wendy’s skin is capable of removing airborne pollution from the air so we had a simple architectural equation, More = More. The more fabric we could install on the site, the more pollution we could remove. Scaffolding is the most efficient way to create area—it is an off-the-shelf and rentable system—so we designed Wendy to maximize surface square footage within a scaffolding armature.
We believe that the Young Architects Program is a chance to push at the boundaries of architecture. Typically, architects are on a quest to minimize the footprints of their buildings. Here we had a chance to inverse that game and make our design pro-active. The titania nanoparticles applied to Wendy’s skin let her impact the environment beyond the confines of her site and footprint.
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Wendy runs on its own. As soon sunlight hits the nanoparticles, a photosynthetic process kicks in and cleans the air. Beyond that, Wendy‘s job is to inspire, to show the potential of architecture, and to do that we needed to have visitors affected at the human scale. It is hard to fall in love with a scientific description of titania nanoparticles, but easy to go bonkers for a cool summer breeze on a steamy Saturday in Queens. That’s why Wendy, along with a self-perpetuating environmental loop that is powered by the sun, has fans to blast out cool air, water canons to shoot out water, and misters to douse the small courtyard in a ceaseless summer rainstorm.What inspired the spiky shape of Wendy?
First, the spiky shape is based on performance. We connected textile surfaces in the most surface-generating fashion because we want as much surface area as possible to clean as much air as possible. For the final form, we tuned Wendy into the specific form so it inspires and speaks to the people who come to party in the PS1 courtyard. We wanted to give them an architectural thrill and an image that would raise curiosity. To us, this is the power of architecture—to excite the people who use it and to give form to abstract and complicated ideas of ecology.Is it named for someone?
Our project is a storm that pushes at the boundaries of architecture. Like all strong storms, it has a name. We used the Association‘s 1967 hit Windy as the project’s theme song—it was a short leap from there to Wendy.How many Wendys would it take to clean all of New York’s air?
That is an excellent question and one that we are working on the answer to right now!What was your favorite PS1 summer installation of the past?
We loved them all! It is the constant new thinking that keeps our professional inspired!What’s Wendy’s favorite kind of music?
We will have to talk to Wendy after the Warm Up events of 2012 and see which one of the amazing DJs she liked the most. I will let you know as soon she tells us!