COSMO by andrés jaque wins MoMA PS1's young architects program

COSMO by andrés jaque wins MoMA PS1’s young architects program
image courtesy of andrés jaque/office for political innovation

the museum of modern art and MoMA PS1 have announced that andrés jaque’s office for political innovation has won 2015’s annual young architects program. the initiative, now in its 16th edition, offers emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present a temporary, outdoor installation that provides shade, seating, and water.

the architects must also work within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling. andrés jaque, drawn from a pool of five finalists, will design an urban landscape for the 2015 warm up summer music series in the institution’s outdoor courtyard.

the project is a movable artifact made out of customized irrigation components
image courtesy of andrés jaque/office for political innovation

the winning project, titled ‘COSMO’, is a movable artifact made out of customized irrigation components. the design intends to make visible the hidden urbanism of pipes we live by, and is engineered to filter 3,000 gallons of water. it takes four days for the liquid to become purified, then the cycle continues with the same body of water, becoming more refined with every sequence.

in this way, andrés jaque addresses the statistic put forth by the united nations, estimating that by 2025 two thirds of the global population will live in countries that lack sufficient water.

‘this year’s proposal takes one of the young architects program’s essential requirements – providing a water feature for leisure and fun – and highlights water itself as a scarce resource,’ explained pedro gadanho, curator in MoMA’s department of architecture and design. ‘relying on off-the-shelf components from agro-industrial origin, an exuberant mobile architecture celebrates water-purification processes and turns their intricate visualization into an unusual backdrop for the warm up sessions.’