MoMA
Posts tagged ‘ARO’
March 16, 2010  |  Rising Currents
Rising Currents: Installation Underway!

We started the installation of the teams’ wall materials and models in the gallery yesterday, with ARO’s team beginning the assembly of their model. We liked the correlation of the unpacking of “Lower Manhattan” from the Manhattan Mini-Storage boxes! Each of the five teams are coming to do on-site installations this week. We’re looking forward to the public opening of the Rising Currents exhibition on March 24.


January 26, 2010  |  Rising Currents
Rising Currents: High Stakes

Left: Long cylindrical palisade cells, the primary site of light absorption and photosynthesis, are found just below the upper surface of a leaf. Image courtesy University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Life Sciences; Right: A merged GIS-based model of the New York-New Jersey Upper Bay, emphasizing the fluid continuity of topography and bathymetry. Deepest areas are indicated in dark blue, highest elevations in green. © Palisade Bay Team: Guy Nordenson and Associates, Catherine Seavitt Studio, and Architecture Research Office

Catherine Seavitt, AIA LEED AP, is the Principal of Catherine Seavitt Studio in New York and co-author, with Guy Nordenson and Adam Yarinsky, of the book On the Water: Palisade Bay.

As one of the authors of the 2007 Latrobe Prize study On the Water: Palisade Bay, the backstory project that led to the development of the MoMA Rising Currents workshop and exhibition, I often get asked the question, “How did you come up with the title Palisade Bay?”  It’s a three-part answer.

January 12, 2010  |  Rising Currents,
Rising Currents: From Workshop to Exhibition

Rising Currents enticed hundreds of visitors to brave the cold and spend their weekend at P.S.1’s Saturday Sessions, exploring the Rising Currents open studios and listening to the architects-in-residence present their design solutions for New York’s rising sea level. The open house marked the official conclusion of the first phase of the Rising Currents project, the eight-week architect-in-residence workshop. Working together with MoMA’s Exhibition Design, Graphics, and Architecture and Design departments, the five multidisciplinary teams now move their projects forward by determining how best to transfer the results of their P.S.1 workshop processes into engaging design presentations within the context of a MoMA gallery. Below, the teams report on their final week in the workshop.  A video of the presentations will be available on the Rising Currents website www.moma.org/risingcurrents soon.

Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang, nARCHITECTS
ZONE 3:

January 5, 2010  |  Rising Currents
Rising Currents: Open Studios at P.S.1 (Last chance!)

As the hustle and bustle of the holiday season took over New York City in the past weeks, the Rising Currents architecture teams-in-residence enjoyed the winter wonderland from their studios at P.S.1. The teams are engaged in the final production push before the Rising Currents workshop concludes this Saturday, January 9, with a (last!) opportunity for the public to visit the teams in their studios and learn about and discuss the five projects addressing New York/New Jersey’s imminent rising sea level. As part of P.S.1’s Saturday Sessions, the studios will be open from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m., and a presentation and public Q&A session will take place from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. Don’t miss this opportunity to weigh in on the next phase of New York City’s [g]local designs for the future! The Rising Currents exhibition will open at MoMA on March 24.

Film shot by Robin Urban Smith.

Above, Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, talks about the overall goals and challenges of the Rising Currents project. Also, stay tuned to the blog for Rising Currents updates from leaders in ecology, architecture, engineering, and civic administration.

December 22, 2009  |  Rising Currents
Rising Currents: Open Studios

The five Rising Currents architect-in-residence teams have been playing host to many interested parties in the past weeks. A recent visit from The New York City Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability and The Port Authority of NY and NJ served as a reminder that the impact of this project transcends the walls of the studio and the museum. On December 12, hundreds of museum visitors explored the studios at P.S.1. Each team implemented different presentation methods—from drawings, models, and maps to oyster farming demonstrations and delicious topographic cakes—to convey their project vision. The teams will open their studios to the public once more at the close of the workshop on Saturday, January 9, from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Left: Visitors attend the Open Studios at P.S.1 on December 12. Right: NYC Mayor's Office attends Open Studios at P.S.1

Left: Visitors attend the Open Studios at P.S.1 on December 12. Right: NYC Mayor's Office attends Open Studios at P.S.1

December 15, 2009  |  Rising Currents
Rising Currents: The Halfway Mark

With one month down and one to go, the five architecture teams presented their projects to the public for the first time at P.S.1’s Saturday Sessions last weekend. Incorporating the public dialogue of the weekend into their studio work, the teams now begin to enter production mode, transforming their ideas into models, drawings, digital animations, and mixed media for the upcoming MoMA exhibition.

Matthew Baird, Matthew Baird Architects
ZONE 2:

Matthew Baird Architects, Oil Tanks at Bayonne Shoreline

Matthew Baird Architects, Oil Tanks at Bayonne Shoreline

Even if talks go well at this week’s COP 15, greenhouse gases will still increase in our global atmosphere. Our think tank at P.S.1 is considering how to address energy needs and to reduce the carbon footprint in any rethinking of our New York Harbor site. Lately, we’ve been considering the six hundred oil tanks located in Bayonne, NJ. With sea level rise and storm surge, a substantial portion of this area will be regularly or periodically under water. After creating a series of natural and man-made buffers at the water’s edge to cap and contain the compromised soil at the existing tank farm, we propose continuing to use the existing massive infrastructure to create energy. In the cleaner, greener future, we would make fuel from a renewable resource: algae. Algal biodiesel is carbon neutral, and thus would not add to greenhouse gas emissions. Part of our approach is to find local solutions for global problems.

December 8, 2009  |  Rising Currents
Rising Currents Sneak Preview! Visit the Teams at P.S.1 on December 12

This Saturday, December 12 (2:00–6:00 p.m.), is the first opportunity for the public to visit the Rising Currents architect-in-residence studios at P.S.1. As part of P.S.1’s Saturday Sessions, the five teams will open their studios to the public and be available to discuss their work. Two rounds of presentations will be given. The first round of presentations will begin at 2:15 p.m. and be repeated at 4:30 p.m. Below, the teams offer a preview of their site work to date.

Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang, nARCHITECTS
ZONE 3:

After two engineering workshops with Arup, we are pursuing four temporal strategies that unite the disparate scales of our site, and extend the domains of water and land across each other: 1) ferries and mobile programs on barges powered by methane gas collected from the Owl’s Head Wastewater Treatment Plant interconnect a network of hybrid stations/storm surge deflectors; 2) islands combine the infrastructural with the ecological, and are interconnected with inflatable storm surge barriers: “airbag urbanism”; 3) housing on stilts, off the sewage grid, is combined with floating treatment wetlands; 4) a pervious network of infiltration basins, swales, and culverts opportunistically appropriates underutilized plots of land, and when dry, functions as a decentralized network of parks.

December 1, 2009  |  Rising Currents
Rising Currents: Two Weeks Deep

A back-to-school energy is percolating through the hallways of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the historic public school building that serves as home to the interdisciplinary architecture-in-residence teams working on MoMA’s Rising Currents workshop and exhibition. In just two weeks the galleries have been transformed into research laboratories, and design strategies are quickly emerging amidst studio work, model building, site visits, collaborative consultations, visiting lectures, and pinup reviews. Below, each team weighs in on their site work to date.

November 24, 2009  |  Rising Currents
Rising Currents: Meet ARO

In addition to the four teams working at P.S.1, MoMA has invited Adam Yarinsky and Architecture Research Office (ARO) to contribute to the Rising Currents project. ARO’s existing research will offer valuable contextual material for the exhibition, and a proposed solution for a site that encompasses Lower Manhattan. Here ARO gives an overview of their background as well as some initial design concepts and questions. You’ll hear more from all the teams next week.

Architecture Research Office is excited to join the teams of exceptional designers invited by MoMA to participate in Rising Currents. We come to this project after two years of research into the changing climate’s impact on New York City. Funded through the American Institute of Architects’ Latrobe Research Fellowship and conducted with structural engineer Guy Nordenson and landscape architect Catherine Seavitt, this study forms the basis of the Rising Currents workshop and exhibition. Our team studied everything we could about the Upper Bay—from its ecology to its history to its fluid-dynamic character. We learned that an era of elevated sea levels will produce more frequent and more severe storms, a challenge that necessitates a new relationship between the city and the water.