Weekend Warm Up and cool down at MoMA PS 1

Through the Young Archi­tects Pro­gram, an annual  com­pe­ti­tion at MoMA PS 1, design­ers address envi­ron­men­tal issues like shade, seat­ing, water, and recy­cling through a series of installations.

 “Wendy” – this year’s win­ning sub­mis­sion from design firm HWKN–is a large, spiky blue sculp­tural instal­la­tion con­structed out of “nylon fab­ric treated with a ground break­ing tita­nia nanopar­ti­cle spray to neu­tral­ize air­borne pol­lu­tants”. Accord­ing to the design­ers, the neu­tral­iz­ing effect of these mate­ri­als is the equiv­a­lent of remov­ing 260 cars from the road.

The empha­sis on air pol­lu­tion, how­ever, ignores the installation’s use of water as “enter­tain­ment” in the form of mists, a water canon, and a pool. In this region it can be dif­fi­cult to remem­ber that, glob­ally, human water con­sump­tion threat­ens the planet’s abil­ity to replen­ish resources nat­u­rally. Even while we enjoy cool­ing off on a scorch­ing hot sum­mer day, let’s also remem­ber what a lux­ury it is to play in water with no con­cern for con­ser­va­tion. Devel­op­ing solu­tions to com­plex prob­lems of eco­log­i­cal sus­tain­abil­ity requires inno­v­a­tive solu­tions and this instal­la­tion forces us to ques­tion our assump­tions of the lim­its of art and design.

Wendy is part of MoMA PS 1’s annual Warm Up series that offers music, rotat­ing exhi­bi­tions, and a vari­ety of per­for­mances every Sat­ur­day through Sep­tem­ber 8. Tick­ets are avail­able in per­son or through the web­site. How­ever, if your sum­mer enter­tain­ment bud­get is already run­ning low, con­sider apply­ing to vol­un­teer with MoMA PS 1. You’ll score free museum passes and maybe even some behind-the-scenes gossip!

Image: MoMA PS 1