MoMA PS1: Canopy - nARCHITECTS | Eric Bunge, Mimi Hoang

Canopy was a temporary structure built in P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s courtyard, an art and music venue that attracts 8,000 revelers to its weekly Saturday Warm Up music parties every summer. In addition to visiting the museum, visitors also lounge, play, drink, and dance to some of the most avant-garde dj’s and musicians to visit New York. On weekdays and Sundays, the space is used by a quieter audience, including children and their families.

The 11,000 sf Canopy made with freshly cut green bamboo, built as a precise translation of a 3d computer model. The project relied on a singular tectonic system to bind together provisions for overhead shade, structure and varying atmospheres, resulting in a ‘deep landscape’ that affects the entire depth of the courtyard.

Dips in the canopy defined rooms open to the sky, each with a distinct climatic environment for different modes of lounging: a large wading pool; fog nozzles that spread a cool halo of mist on revelers; a sound environment and water misters provided intermittent rain showers and randomly soaked the crowd; and a sandy cove maximized exposure to sun and shade

Fourteen hundred poles of Phyllostachys aurea bamboo, each 21 feet (7 meters) long, were express harvested and shipped from Dudley, Georgia. We raced against time to bend them into the desired profiles while they were still green.

The project was experienced by an estimated 100,000 visitors throughout its 5 month existence and underwent a slow temporal transformation as the freshly cut green bamboo turned from green to light tan.

Excerpt from the film Canopy by Mogollón

Original competition physical model, 2004.

Client: MoMA PS1
Location: P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, NY
Status: Completed
Dates: 2004
Sq Footage: 30,000sf space; 11,000sf coverage
Program: Interactive installation for cultural activities
Environmental: Built from green bamboo; bamboo was re-used by another artist after the project.

Design Team: Eric Bunge, Mimi Hoang | Jorge Pereira, Samuel Dufaux

Fabrication Team: Eric Bunge, Mimi Hoang | Samuel Dufaux, Nick Gelpi, Matt Hutchinson, Ian Keough, Jonathan Kurtz, Jeannie Lee, Marica McKeel, Jorge Pereira, Christopher Rountos, Aaron Tweedie | Anthony Acciavatti, Jenny Chou, Jennifer Fetner, Toru Hasegawa, Mark Hash, Hikaru Iwasaka, Sebastian Potz, Kevin Sipe

Photography: Frank Oudeman

Related Projects