Today, MoMA PS1 opened its 2019 summer installation, Hórama Rama, by the 20th annual Young Architects Program winners, Mexico-based firm Pedro & Juana. Led by Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss, the firm worked with MoMA and MoMA PS1 to construct an “immersive junglescape set within a 40-foot-high, 90-foot-wide cyclorama structure,” at the MoMA’s Long Island City outpost in New York according to a press release.
Kris Graves
Hórama Rama’s circular scaffolding structure is clad with wood bristles and its interior features a panoramic photo of a jungle, immersing visitors in images of lush greenery. A surrounding “urban jungle” featuring hammocks made in southern Mexico, wood seating, and a functioning waterfall contrast the New York skyline that sits just beyond the installation. While open, Hórama Rama will be the venue for MoMA PS1’s music series, Warm Up.
“Finding inspiration in historical panoramas, Pedro & Juana have designed a structure that will allow visitors to immerse themselves in a fantastical wilderness, a visual refuge from the city,” said MoMA PS1 chief curator Peter Eleey in the same release. “By juxtaposing two landscapes in transition—the jungle and the Long Island City skyline—they draw attention to the evolving conditions of our environment, both globally and locally, at a crucial moment.”
Kris Graves
Hórama Rama was selected from a pool of five finalists: State College, Pa.–based Low Design Office, led by DK Osseo-Asare and Ryan Bollom, AIA; New York–based Romanian architect Oana Stanescu and Stockholm-based Japanese designer Akane Moriyama; Boston-based Matter Design, led by Brandon Clifford; and Mexico City–based TO, led by Carlos Facio and Jose G. Amozurrutia.
“For the 20th anniversary of the Young Architects Program, each of the five finalists designed potential—of surface, of movement, of space, of structure—as narratives that both reveal and conceal,” said Sean Anderson, Associate Curator in MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design in the same release. “Pedro & Juana’s world-within-a-world, Hórama Rama, is a manifold of views in which to see and be seen, to find and lose oneself in a radically different environment. The installation constructs a collection of scenes into which visitors may escape, even if for a moment, whether in a hammock or by the waterfall.”
Kris Graves
Kris Graves
Hórama Rama will be on view at MoMA PS1 from June 28 through Sept. 2.