SuralArk

32-01, Vernon Boulevard, Queens, Queens County, NY, United States

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SuralArk

32-01, Vernon Boulevard, Queens, Queens County, NY, United States

Firm

Austin+Mergold

Type

Cultural › Pavilion Sculpture

YEAR

2014

SIZE

0 sqft - 1000 sqft

BUDGET

$0 - 10K

© Austin + Mergold, with Marc Krawitz

Special thanks to New York Architecture League, Socrates Sculpture Park, Cornell University Department of Architecture, Drexel University Department of Architecture and Interiors, Saint-Gobain, Simpson Strong Tie
& Boris Ravvin, Billy Haines, Yuri Mergold, Daniel Marino, Spencer Lapp and Andrew Fu

Noah’s Ark, after it landed on Mount Ararat, became perhaps the first architectural folly – an imposing fanciful, yet purposeless structure: a boat with no water around, a house with no inhabitants, a simple hulking mass of a conflicted typology.

Chosen from over 170 entries, Sural™ Ark is an American vernacular interpretation of the original. Made of 2x6 lumber and vinyl siding, the Sural™ Ark has its material origins in the American suburbia that is surprisingly close to NYC (incidentally, there is a vinyl sided house just across the street from the Socrates Park entrance) and its formal roots as a (discarded) upturned ship cast ashore. Whether this was once a house in Levittown now on its way to becoming a boat, or a new hybrid house-boat under construction on the shore of East River in anticipation of the next hurricane flood is not entirely clear. The visitor is invited inside, under the siding canopy, to contemplate the present horizon of Socrates Sculpture Park and NYC, the past, and perhaps the forthcoming great floods.

Now On View: May 11th - August 3rd 2014