Pedro & Juana selected as winners of the 2019 Young Architects Program

Hórama Rama by Pedro & Juana (Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo & Mecky Reuss) has been named the winner of The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1’s 20th annual Young Architects Program. Opening in June 2019, this year’s architectural installation is an immersive junglescape set within a large-scale cyclorama that sits atop MoMA PS1’s courtyard walls. Selected from among five finalists, Hórama Rama will be on view through the summer, serving as a temporary built environment for MoMA PS1’s pioneering outdoor music series Warm Up.

For 20 years, the Young Architects Program at The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 has offered emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present innovative projects, challenging each year’s winners to develop creative designs for a temporary and sustainable outdoor installation that provides shade, seating, and water. The architects must also work within environmentally sensitive guidelines.

Hórama Rama is a large-scale cyclorama featuring a panoramic image of the jungle on scaffolding that protrudes above the courtyard of MoMA PS1 and catapults visitors into a wild, foreign territory. The nearly 40-foot-tall, 90-foot-wide structure hovers over the courtyard space, reframing the horizon and positioning visitors in an urban jungle. The presence of this large circular structure reconfigures the courtyard into an immersive environment that visitors can move in and out of, contrasting with the cityscape immediately adjacent to the Museum. Amplifying the experience are hammocks crafted in the south of Mexico along with a functioning waterfall. The exterior of the structure features protruding wood “bristles” that create a dynamic sense of movement.

“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. “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.”

“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,” MoMA PS1 Chief Curator Peter Eleey added.” “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.”

The other finalists for this year’s MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program were Low Design Office (DK Osseo-Asare and Ryan Bollom), Oana Stănescu & Akane Moriyama, Matter Design (Brandon Clifford, Johanna Lobdell, and Wes McGee), and TO (Jose G. Amozurrutia and Carlos Facio). An exhibition of the five finalists’ proposed projects will be on view at MoMA PS1 in summer 2019, organized by Sean Anderson, Associate Curator, with Arièle Dionne- Krosnick, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

The 2019 Young Architects Program is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Major support is provided by Allianz, MoMA’s partner for design and innovation. Generous funding is provided by the Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation, Jeffrey and Michèle Klein.