IDEAS CITY 2015: Register by Feb. 20 for the Third Biennial Street Architecture Competition!

What do worms and mirrors have in common?

If you’re familiar with Ideas City, the biennial festival that intersperses the area around the New Museum on the Bowery with a series of installations, games, talks, and performances, you might not find this to be an odd question.

During its past two iterations, Storefront for Art and Architecture and its partners have sponsored a prize for architectural submissions proposing temporary structures that allow for new forms of collective engagement and collaboration. The winning team is given a monetary prize of $7,500, as well as a $20,000 budget to construct its idea on the day of the festival.

In 2011, the studios PlayLab and Family brought eight cyan and raspberry modular accordion “worms” to the Bowery. The patterned nylon structures could be configured in an infinite number of ways to formulate gathering spots and orientation points within the crowded context of a public event. The worms reimagined the concept of festival tents with a lighthearted approach and a sense of playfulness.

In 2013, Davidson Rafailidis disrupted perceptions of the street and the city with “MirrorMirror,” an angled gable roof made from mirroring panels that created a network of sightlines, gazes, and surprises for event-goers, who become actively self-conscious of their participation and collectivity in the experience generated by the structure.

“The Worms,” Family + Playlab, 2011

“MirrorMirror,” Davidson Rafailidis, 2013

What’s next? This year’s theme, The Invisible City, is an invitation to explore the question of visibility and related dynamics, including transparency and surveillance, citizenship and representation, expression and suppression, and participation and dissent as defining forces within the contemporary city.

Storefront, the New Museum, and the NYC Department of Transportation are accepting submissions for the 2015 Street Architecture Prize. The registration deadline is only nine days away, on February 20th (official submissions are due on February 23rd), so to jumpstart your imagination, we’ve asked past winners to answer some questions about their street architecture.

What do you see as temporary architecture’s greatest potential?

Georg Rafailidis, “MirrorMirror”: Architecture is slow. Temporary architecture implicitly questions this assumption. This is its greatest potential, we think. It offers a platform to investigate a kind of “instant architecture,” an architecture whose life span is identical to the lifespan of its short-term use and which instantly disappears after an event.

All architectural elements are affected by this concept of extreme short life span: the relationship to the ground (foundation), the question of being contextual (when you do not know when and where it will be built-up next), the extreme transformation from small (stored) to big (space), the acts of quick construction and disassembly.

Stephanie Davidson, “MirrorMirror”: The capacity for temporary architecture to transform environments really dramatically, quickly and easily, without impact, is its greatest potential, we think.

Dong-Ping Wong, “The Worms”: To transform a space with immediacy and without the compromises that can come with permanent construction.

“The Worms,” Family + Playlab, 2011

What is the most interesting aspect of the street as a site?

G.R.: The most interesting aspect of the street as a site is that it offers a task without being program-specific. The street is a space that is used without the need to be named with narrowly defined program as is often done with buildings (the “school,” the “library” etc.). The street as a place of inhabitation forces one to think about and deal with more fundamental facets of architecture without the fallback of “fulfilling” a specific function or program.

S.D.: The most interesting aspect of the street as site is that it’s not an orchestrated event space — it is an existing space that people use daily for all types of normal things like just getting from point A to B. Using the street as a site means that people are just there, doing their thing — and in New York City, this often means lots of people – the street architecture can throw them a little curveball and offer a moment of surprise, a new spatial experience, without having to lure them to a specific event space.

D.P.W.: The lack of control, the non-ownership.

What do you see as the most relevant historical references for street architecture?

G.R.: Instead of thinking of objects that are placed within the street, we like to think of the street itself as a form of architecture, street architecture. One of the most intriguing examples are, for us, the glazed roofs of street arcades that appeared in the 19th century. We even see the Pantheon as street architecture as it is open to the top. It can be read as street facades bending and curving to the center, forming the oculus. The interior walls of the Pantheon are articulated like exterior building facades.

For you, how is the concept of building a temporary structure in New York different than in other places?

G.R.: We don’t really see a difference between building a temporary structure in NYC and building one in other important urban centers.

D.P.W: The breadth of how it might be used and interpreted is much wider, the predictability much lower. It will also get loved and wrecked way quicker.

“MirrorMirror,” Davidson Rafailidis, 2013

As an important part of Ideas City, what do you think is your project’s contribution to perceptions of the future city?

G.R.: A lot of our work tries to address the tension between the increasingly short life span of contemporary programs and the inertia of architecture. The “MirrorMirror” tents attempt to be contextual without knowing what the future context will be. The tents amplify their surroundings and play with their environments – no matter what the environment – in intense and surreal ways. They manage to be responsive and specific at the same time as being low-tech and simple.

S.D.: Our project is about amplifying the existing surroundings. The “MirrorMirror” tents play with their environments – no matter what the environment – in intense and surreal ways. We see our project as part of an existing movement, in architecture, to use relatively humble means to achieve surprising, extraordinary ends. Big, great cities have always been playgrounds for testing-out new types of experiences that architecture can offer – the future city will probably continue to be this type of playground, a testbed for architectural experiments.

D.P.W.: That even public circulation spaces (like sidewalks) can support a deep variety of civic program.

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How’s that for inspiration?

Submitting teams must be comprised of at least an architect, an artist, and an engineer, and participants should have finished school not more than ten years ago.

For full details and to register, visit: Storefrontnews.org.