Every February, the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York convenes an architectural competition for its headquarter PS1 in Queens.
Architects from around the world present their proposals for an ephemeral pavilion that then, from June to September, will host the outdoor activity of avant-garde music and performances of the museum. This year, the Spanish architect Andrés Jaque, and artist of Gunter Gallery, has been selected to carry out his project: 'Cosmo'.
This futuristic construction is more than a complex of half-pipes and metal structures, because carries a social and environmental consciousness so typical in Jaque’s work.
It is little structure located in the outer courtyard of MoMA PS1 that is capable to debug a certain number of liters of polluted water from the neighboring Hudson River. This is the main idea that the architect has developed in this structure consisting of elements of everyday technology, such as cable ties, transparent pipes, drums with algae, plastic bags ... All these pieces, assembled, form a circuit where water circulates contaminated and it is debugged thanks to algae. As long as the water is decontaminated, the architectural installation changes its color, like a beautiful scenery around the environment, art and environmental awareness.
It is an artistic process itself, which reconfirms that Andrés Jaque is not just an architect, he is a social thinker, a leader of global architectural performance and the most important figure of Spanish art in the international creative scene. Jaque won the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale last July 2014 and lives between Madrid and New York, where he teaches at the universities of Princeton and Columbia.
Since 2013 his first and only graphic work so far, 'House in Never Never Land' (based on his mythical architectural works in Ibiza) is on the list of Gunter Gallery, in a limited and signed edition. The artwork is accompanied by an explanatory book on the construction of such housing that launched Andrés Jaque to fame.