By Kelly Loudenberg
The Young Architects Program is a competition that invites emerging architects to propose a building project for P.S.1's Long Island City courtyard. Experts in the field of architecture, including architects, curators, academics, and magazine editors, nominated five finalists from a pool of 17 candidates. The finalists were given a project budget of $60,000 and instructed to transform the courtyard which will serve as a venue for “Warm Up,” the popular music series held annually there. Xefirotarch's winning entry, titled “SUR,” is a playful, elegant installation resembling a reconfigured skeletal form that will undulate and sprawl throughout the courtyard.”'SUR' is futureistic and organic, sophisticated and exhilarating,” said P.S.1 Executive Director Alanna Heiss. “Visitors will feel as if they've landed on another planet for the afternoon.””SUR” consists of a red and white base cast with composite fiberglass and rubber, and a corresponding freestanding aluminum armature covered with latex and polyurethane-sprayed spandex. Scattered between the fluid surfaces of the skeletal form are benches to accommodate some of the 3,500 to 5,000 people who attend each music event in the series.The canopy overhead will be silver in appearance and conceal artificial lighting. Combined with the suspended, tiered shard of fabric, the artificial lighting and the summer breeze will dapple visitors beneath with a range of shadows and light densities.Xefirotarch, founded by Hernan Diaz Alonso in 2000, is an award-winning architecture design firm based in Los Angeles. “With the flair of a circus and the ambience of a playground, 'SUR' functions as a game: there is no narrative, only active rules and emergent behavior. Prescriptive mappings are turned inside-out,” said Diaz Alonso in a press release describing the installation.Born in Argentina, Diaz Alonso received architecture degrees from the National University of Rosario in Argentina and Columbia University's AAD Program in New York.”Hernan Diaz Alonso's proposal is a bold one, which poses unique challenges,” said Terrence Riley, the Philip Johnson chief curator in the department of Architecture and Design at MOMA. “The team will need to devote all their energies to the creation of a tectonic language for a formal system that has heretofore been largely theoretical.”This summer marks the eighth year that P.S.1 has hosted a combined architectural installation and music series in its outdoor galleries.The installation will be on view through September 2005. The 2005 Young Architects Program is made possible by the Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation, Jeffrey and Michle Klein, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
