Thursday, February 9, 2012
Art Spikey Air-Cleaning Star Landing in MoMA PS1 Courtyard This Summer
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 8:58 AM
Though it's currently home to the Performance Dome—where a new performance series just launched—come June the MoMA PS1 courtyard will host a watery blue explosion titled "Wendy" as the latest entry in its Young Architects Program. The winning architecture firm, Flatiron-based HWKN, follows successive Brooklyn-based winners Interboro Partners and SO-IL. Their design will help clean the air in car-clogged Long Island City.
The spikey design will straddle one of the cement-walled courtyard's partitions, leaving plenty of room for the Warm Up! stage and providing shade (and water and mist!) for sweaty summer revelers. Most impressively, though, the porous design will actually clean the air that passes through it. Here's how:
"Wendy" is composed of nylon fabric treated with a ground breaking titania nanoparticle spray to neutralize airborne pollutants. During the summer of 2012, "Wendy" will clean the air to an equivalent of taking 260 cars off the road.
As opposed to the last two summers' environmental installations, the enigmatically titled "Wendy" marks a return to sculptural YAP winners like MOS's Afterparty and Gelatin's Percutaneous Delights. Plus all that clean air will come in handy during summer Sunday dance marathons.
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