YAP MAXXI 2011

MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 of New York have joined forces with MAXXI to launch YAP MAXXI, the first Italian edition of the established Young Architects Program. Each year YAP, which in New York has reached its 12th edition, invites emerging achitects to design an installation capable of providing a space for the museum’s summer events program and an area with “shade, water and repose” for visitors.
As is the case with MoMA PS1, the selection of the five finalists and the choice of the winning project takes place thanks to the collaboration of a broad panel of experts and a combined MAXXI, MoMA/MoMA PS1 jury. As well as emphasising the public status of the MAXXI garden space, the objective is to promote innovative designers sensitive to the issues of environmental protection.

The exhibition, open simultaneously at MoMA and MAXXI, documents all five MoMA PS1 finalists and the five MAXXI finalists. The museum’s external areas, transformed into a garden of green islands thanks to the project WHATAMI by the stARTT, will instead host MAXXI’s summer evening events devoted to the various facets of contemporary arts.

Exhibition

The Rome and New York Young Architects Program exhibitions present the work of all finalists and are curated respectively by Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator at the MAXXI Architettura and Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture

THE WINNING PROJECT – ROME

stARTT – WHATAMI
Italy
The winning proposal in Rome is an archipelago of green spaces including a great main ‘island’ and several smaller ones scattered across the museum’s outdoor space. Large ‘flowers’ provide visitors with shadow by day and light at night, creating an area for summer relaxation and a grandstand during the museum’s numerous outdoor events. At the end of the summer, all the natural materials will be returned to their places of origin. The high-tech flower objects will be relocated throughout the city, in parks and public school playgrounds.

THE WINNING PROJECT – NEW YORK

Interboro Partners – HOLDING PATTERN
Brooklyn, New York
A bold canopy of ropes and sails defines the space and provides shade without the visual distraction and spatial interference of a support system at ground level. The focus is on visitors’ interactions with one another and with moveable benches, stools, wading pools, and Ping-Pong tables rather than physical or tactile encounters with the structure itself. The adjacent side courtyards are treated differently, the smaller one lined with mirrors, the larger filled with a dense urban wood.

The FINALISTS – ROME