Escobedo Soliz Studio wins the 2016 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program

MoMA PS1 announced today that Escobedo Soliz Studio has won the 2016 Young Architects Program (YAP) in New York. The winner of the annual YAP competition will temporarily transform the outdoor courtyard of MoMA PS1 in Long Island City in Queens, NY with an outdoor installation — specifically for the yearly Warm Up summer music festivities in late June. YAP participants are required to work within guidelines that address environmental issues and sustainability.

In the most recent competitions, Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation won last year's competition with the water-filtering "Cosmo", and David Benjamin of The Living won in 2014 for the biotechnological "Hy-Fi".

Lazbent Escobedo and Andres Solíz of the fairly new Mexico City-based Escobedo Soliz Studio won the coveted commission out of five finalists with their urban landscape proposal titled "Weaving the Courtyard". The other finalists were First Office (Andrew Atwood and Anna Neimark), Ultramoderne (Yasmin Vorbis and Aaron Forrest), COBALT OFFICE (Andrew Colopy and Robert Booth), and Frida Escobedo.

"Weaving the Courtyard" will open in early June.

Read on for more about the installation.

"The architects describe this year’s construction as 'neither an object nor a sculpture standing in the courtyard, but a series of simple, powerful actions that generate new and different atmospheres.' Weaving the Courtyard is a site-specific architectural intervention using the courtyard’s concrete walls to generate both sky and landscape, with embankments in which platforms of soil and water suggest the appearance of a unique topography."

"Variations of density will be visible throughout the weaving, inviting visitors to interact and occupy spaces for different periods of time. The woven cloud will provide shade to the visitors below while recasting the courtyard in a bright colored web. As the materials will be largely unaltered by the construction process, they can be re-used at the close of summer."

Since their early collaborations as university students, Lazbent Escobedo and Andres Solíz have focused on the topics and issues of urban recycling, constructive innovation, social dialog, and participation strategies in their work. Their recent projects as Escobedo Soliz Studio include a chapel/community center in Campeche that is made of recycled timber, Duplex Housing in Mexico City, and a Research Center in Meztitlan.

More project images in the gallery below.