The winning project, Wendy, opening at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City in late June, is an experiment that tests how far the boundaries of architecture can expand to create ecological and social effect. 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.
Wendy's boundary is defined by tools like shade, wind, rain, music, and visual identity to reach past the confines of physical limits. Wendy crafts an environment, not just a space. Spiky arms made of the nylon fabric mentioned above will reach out with micro-programs like blasts of cool air, music, water cannons and mists to create social zones throughout the courtyard.
Wendy sits far enough away from the stage used for the annual Warm Up events to let the concerts go on unimpeded, but close enough to the entrance to create a filter and initial impact to visitors. It bridges over the walls into the large and small courtyards of MoMA PS1.
Wendy features a simple, inexpensive construction system: the scaffold is deployed efficiently to create a 70 x 70 x 45-inch volume to form the largest surface area possible.
The other finalists for this year's MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program were AEDS|Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio (Ammar Eloueini, Paris, France/New Orleans, LA), Cameron Wu (Cambridge, MA), Ibañez Kim Studio (Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim, Cambridge, MA), and UrbanLab (Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn, Chicago, IL). An exhibition of the five finalists' proposed projects will be on view at MoMA over the summer.