My Hair is at MoMA PS1 (mcdowellespinosa/KUTONOTUK)

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My Hair is at MoMA PS1 (mcdowellespinosa/KUTONOTUK)

Firm

TempAgency
mcdowellespinosa

“My Hair is at MoMA PS1” is a project about everyone: the waste we produce, our hair. It is an element that links us, divides us, fascinates us, and traces our diversity as a process and relic of life and reflection of ourselves.There are over 4,000 hair salons and barbershops in the five boroughs of New York City. Each salon produces up to 4 cubic feet of hair clippings daily, and nearly all of it ends up in a landfill; the material that once signified diversity, character, and collective identity is readily forgotten and discarded. This project aims at diverting hair as a material waste stream and fabricating the cultural and architectural potential imbued with thermal, acoustic, and structural qualities as well as life and growth. Working in collaboration with material scientists, hair stylists, medical doctors and engineers, we revive and transform waste hair into a dynamic, interactive, and resilient modular canvas. “My Hair is at MoMA PS1” is a project about curating this process and manufacturing the power and spatial typologies of this living material.The process we propose has four phases: hair collection, treatment, assembly and installation. TempAgency partners with over 120 NYC hair salons and barbershops and collects a total amount of 80 cubic feet of hair for a period of five days. Collected hair is carefully inspected, sanitized, dyed and bound with customized weather-proof, fire-retardant silicone, and is affixed to light and rigid metal mesh, then finally to fiberglass poles. Horizontal and vertical variations of the hair rollers offer six distinct stage-like environments in the MoMA PS1 courtyards: ‘Cut’, ‘Tease’, ‘Brush’, ‘Part’, ‘Wash’, and ‘Love Cave’, and provide a variety of shade, seating, water as well as intense yet flexible spaces for Expo1, Warm-Up, and barbershop for the ultimate cool-down. With a color-coded tagging system, each hair roller is further a representation of individual salon or barbershop from one of five NYC boroughs, and together act as map of hair taxonomy of the city. The tags guide visitors’ quest to find their own hair and salons/barbershops in the MoMA PS1 courtyards. “My Hair is at MoMA PS1” is a landscape of serendipity, layered with scientific and tactile exploration of material and information, and ultimately an architectural expression of renewed life.