Andrés Jaque Wins MoMA PS1 Competition

Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation's COSMO continues MoMA PS1's selection of designs for its Young Architects Program with an emphasis on environmental issues. HWKN's Wendy in 2012 was covered in nanoparticles that cleaned the air; CODA's Party Wall one year later was made from the scraps of skateboard manufacturing; and The Living's Hy-Fi last year featured bricks made from organic matter.


[Rendering of Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation’s COSMO. Image courtesy of Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation.]

COSMO continues this trend with "an assemblage of ecosystems, based on advanced environmental design." To further quote MoMA's press release, "COSMO is engineered to filter and purify 3,000 gallons of water, eliminating suspended particles and nitrates, balancing the PH, and increasing the level of dissolved oxygen. It takes four days for the 3,000 gallons of water to become purified, then the cycle continues with the same body of water, becoming more purified with every cycle."


[Rendering of Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation’s COSMO. Image courtesy of Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation.]

The revelling comes in the form of "a stretched-out plastic mesh at the core of the construction [that] will glow automatically whenever its water has been purified." It's hard to determine which of the two released renderings (not much to go on) illustrate this state, if at all, but the installation's form has a very playful quality to it that will make sustainability fun...every four days, at least.