Eco friendly circular towers entered the courtyard of MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York. Since 2000, MoMA created the YAP, The Young Architect Program, to bridge the MoMA and MoMA PS1 together. “… It not only furthers our curatorial mission, identifying and providing an outlet for emerging young talent, it aims to give something back to the community that has been so supportive of us.” Announced earlier this year, David Benjamin, winner of The Living, is the 15th edition winner of YAP. His innovative ideas on an eco friendly, semi-permanent landscape for the MoMA PS1’s courtyard won him the rightful spot of first place out of five finalist.
Named Hy-Fi, the landscape project opened on Thurs. June 26, providing seating, shade and water for the 2014 Warm Up summer music series. The towers are built up of organic and reflective bricks. The organic bricks are made up of corn starch and will decompose on their own in time. The reflective bricks, which top off Hy-Fi, are designed to be daylight mirrors angled to reflect the sun downwards towards the ground to bounce the light to the the bottom layer of the organic bricks.
Talk about a well thought out project.Due to the thinly built and organic bricks, it creates a cool sensation inside of the towers, releasing any hot air upwards out of the towers. Pedro Gadanho, Curator in MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design mentions, “…the first sizable structure to claim near-zero carbon emissions in its construction process and, beyond recycling, it presents itself as being 100% compostable.” Hy-Fi was a perfect contribution to MoMA’s motive to promote eco friendliness through art and architecture.
