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Architects Spin a Giant Rainbow Spiderweb over MoMA PS1

Escobedo Soliz Studio’s woven cloud of color also comes with a mist room and a wading pool.
Photo by Pete Deevakul. Images courtesy MoMA PS1

A multicolored spider’s web hovers over MOMA PS1’s open courtyard right now, and you have to see it to believe it. This site-specific architectural intervention is called Weaving The Courtyard. It's the brainchild of Escobedo Soliz Studio, a Mexico-based firm that scored MoMA PS1's venerable Young Architects Program (YAP) award this year, earning the Queens art museum's outdoor space as a platform to create an experimental installation.

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Escobedo Soliz Studio, also known as Lazbent Pavel Escobedo and Andrés Soliz, categorize the piece as, “neither an object nor a sculpture standing in the courtyard, but a series of simple, powerful actions that generate new and different atmospheres.” The young designers encourage viewers to interact with the piece by varying the web's density to create pockets of shade and sunlight. Visitors in for the long haul at one of PS1's Warm Up concert series will be able to watch it change with the time of day. The architects call the rainbow formation a "woven cloud" that acts as a shady reprieve from the summer sun, but visitors can really beat the heat with the one-two punch of a misting room and wading pool in the back.

Weaving the Courtyard is the 17th edition of YAP’s open call, which highlighted environmental issues this year. Escobedo and Soliz have not only designed the installation largely from recycled materials, but will donate every part of it to local businesses when it comes to an end this fall.

Photo by Pete Deevakul

Photo by Pete Deevakul

For more work by the Escobedo Soliz Studio, check out their website, and learn more about the Young Architects Program here.

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