HOLDING PATTERN | Interboro

Holding Pattern is our project for the 2011 Young Architects Program. It is about 1) recycling and 2) strengthening connections between a large, powerful institution (MoMA PS1) and its neighbors. The Young Architects Program invites architects to create a temporary environment for the celebrated Warm Up music series. To avoid designing and building something we would have to throw away when Warm Up was over, we ensured that all of the project’s components would have a home when the project was deinstalled. We did this by making matches between things institutions in the neighborhood needed and things that would enhance the experience of the MoMA PS1 courtyard. We met with local institutions, asked them what they needed, selected items we thought were a good match, then designed and built them with the understanding that they would be “held” at MoMA PS1 during the summer. When Holding Pattern was deinstalled this past fall, we delivered 79 objects and 84 trees to more than 50 organizations in Long Island City. Because we expanded our client base from one client (MoMA PS1) to over 50, Holding Pattern operated like an urban design project. The environment we created responded to different desires in ways that a fixed piece of architecture couldn’t, and giving the neighborhood a stake in the design made locals more likely to patronize the museum. During the summer, these objects sat in the MoMA PS1 courtyard under a canopy constructed by stringing ropes from holes in MoMA PS1’s 16-foot tall concrete wall to the parapet across the courtyard. Just as Hugh Ferris revealed the potential of New York City’s 1916 zoning code by drawing the theoretical building envelope, we revealed the very odd, idiosyncratic space of the courtyard and created an inexpensive and column-free space for the activity below. From the ground, the experience was of a soaring, hyperboloid surface.