As finalists for the 2016 MoMA / PS1 Young Architects Program competition, Cobalt proposed “Tumble,” a set of six objects that would help to bridge institutions and foster a dialogue between cities and the rural environments on which they depend. The competition asks entrants to design and build an exhibition that serves also as the setting for the PS1 “Warm-Up” concert series that occurs each summer in the museum’s Courtyard in Queens, NY. Thinking beyond that scale, “Tumble” imagined an exhibition without end, an extended life for a more extensive effect.
Tumble begins as exhibition and becomes a lasting creative platform for artists to explore the ecological dialogue between the contemporary city and the non-urban environment. Six small buildings are first configured in the PS1 courtyard, and later are used as artists’ studios by residency programs throughout the U.S. Standing upright, they cast long shadows and are stabilized by water containers creating a cool place to sit and learn about their future locations where they will be tipped on their sides—tumbled—in order to become studios for the production of ecologically themed work that will return to the city in the form to be exhibited. Through strategies of figuration and configuration, Tumble facilitates new forms of collectivity and a lasting discourse on the city’s dependence on outside resources. In the courtyard, small partitioned spaces engender an intimate network of exchange in lieu of the singular spectacle of the crowd. Dispersed as studios, the structures inject a typically introspective residency experience with a larger collective interest. This is made legible by an architectural identity that, in turn, lends visibility to a collaborative effort among arts institutions across the country.
Created with an expanded Cobalt team, including Kerry Joyce, Anastasia Yee, Corey Phelps, Yao Xia, Yu Xin, Rebecca Erde, Nathan Keibler, Tony Yang, Jonathan Pan, Lara Hansmann, Hannah Wang, Andrew Bertics, and Ethan Chan.
Special thanks to Sarah Whiting, Scot Colman, David Costanza, Michelle Chang, Bill Arning, Kyle Henricks, David Breslin and Emily Blanchard, Emily Stein, Chuck Gremillion, Rice School of Architecture and Staff, Rice Design Alliance, Rice University, and Nat Oppenheimer, Pat Arnett, and Paul Laroque of Robert Silman Associates.