MAXXI and MoMA PS1 for YAP – Young Architects Program

The installation WHATAMI by stARTT transforms the MAXXI Piazza into a green archipelago for the summer events
23 June–16 October 2011
a rich programme of performances, encounters, art and music

The projects by the ten finalists in the YAP_Young Architects Program on show in Rome and New York

Via Guido Reni 4a – 00196 Rome
www.fondazionemaxxi.it

Now in its twelfth edition at MoMA PS1, the YAP – Young Architects Program arrives for the first time in Rome, thanks to the collaboration between the MAXXI and MoMA/MoMA PS1. The program, in its Roman guise as YAP MAXXI, has transformed the Museum’s external spaces into a garden of green islands designed to host a series of summer events with WHATAMI, by the Roman office stARTT. An artificial landscape, defined by a series of hills atop which to sit, surmounted by large flowers that offer shade during the day and illumination at night, allowing the public to relax while contemplating the sinuous lines of the MAXXI.

In New York, YAP MoMA/MoMA PS1 presents Holding Pattern by the New York office Interboro Partners.

Both projects were selected from a vast number of international proposals by a jury of members from the MAXXI and MoMA/MoMA PS1. For the duration of YAP, visitors to both institutions have the chance to visit an exhibition of the work of all finalists in the competition.

WHATAMI by stARTT (Simone Capra, Claudio Castaldo)
An archipelago of eight green islands built on a structure of straw bales and earth and dressed with 700 m2 of washed turf. The central island is fixed and around two metres high, while the seven smaller islands are mounted on wheels. This landscape is mobile and illuminated at night by 18 five-metre tall glassfibre flowers that instead cast pools of shade by day. A running water feature completes the installation that is as attractive as it is attentive to environmental issues: it in fact involves a recycling process: at the end of the season, the hills realised with prevalently reusable materials (straw, geotextile membranes, plastic) will be dismantled and donated to the municipality to be used again, together with the flowers, by the local district.

THE PROJECTS BY THE TEN FINALISTS ON SHOW AT MAXXI AND AT MoMA PS1
The projects of the five Italian competition finalists: Raffaella De Simone/Valentina Mandalari (Palermo); Ghigos Ideas (Lissone/Mi, Davide Crippa, Barbara Di Prete and Francesco Tosi); Asif Khan (London, United Kingdom); Langarita Navarro Arquitectos (Madrid, Spain, Mar’a Langarita and V’ctor Navarro), stARTT (Rome, Simone Capra and Claudio Castaldo).

The projects of the five American competition finalists: FormlessFinder (New Haven, CT/Brooklyn, NY, Julian Rose and Garrett Ricciardi); Interboro Partners (Brooklyn, NY, Tobias Armborst, Daniel D’Oca and Georgeen Theodore); MASS Design Group (Boston, MA, Michael Murphy); Matter Architecture Practice (Brooklyn, NY, Sandra Wheeler and Alfred Zollinger); IJP Corporation Architects (London/Cambridge, MA, George L. Legendre).
The Rome and New York YAP exhibitions are curated respectively by Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator at the MAXXI Architettura and Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, MoMA.