ROME.- Now in its 12th edition at MoMA/ MoMA PS1, the YAP – Young Architects Program has reached Rome for the first time thanks to the collaboration between MAXXI and the New York museum. The program, which in Rome goes under the name YAP MAXXI, sees the museum’s external spaces transformed into a garden of green islands that will host the summer season events, thanks to the WHATAMI project, conceived by the Rome studio stARTT. An artificial landscape, delineated by hills on which to pause, topped by great flowers providing shade by day and light by night, will allow the public to relax and contemplate the sinuous lines of the museum. In New York, YAP has seen the realisation of the Holding Pattern project by the New York studio Interboro Partners.

A jury composed of MAXXI and MoMA/MoMA PS1 staff members selected both designs from among the numerous international proposals. For the entire duration of the YAP, visitors to both institutions may visit the exhibitions presenting the projects by all the finalists.

WHATAMI by stARTT (Simone Capra, Claudio Castaldo). An archipelago of eight green islands built on a structure of straw bales and earth and dressed with 700 m2 of washed turf (normally used for football pitches). The central island is fixed and around two metres high, while the seven smaller islands are mounted on wheels. This landscape is mobile and illuminated at night by 18 five-metre tall glassfibre flowers that instead cast pools of shade by day. A running water feature completes the installation that is as attractive as it is attentive to environmental issues: it in fact involves a recycling process: at the end of the season, the hills realised with prevalently reusable materials (straw, geotextile membranes, plastic) will be dismantled and donated to the municipality to be used again, together with the flowers, by the local district.

THE PROJECTS BY THE TEN FINALISTS ON SHOW IN MAXXI’S GALLERY 5 AND AT MOMA
The projects of the five Italian competition finalists: Raffaella De Simone/Valentina Mandalari (Palermo); Ghigos Ideas (Lissone/Mi, Davide Crippa, Barbara Di Prete and Francesco Tosi); Asif Khan (London, United Kingdom); Langarita Navarro Arquitectos (Madrid, Spain, Mar'a Langarita and V'ctor Navarro), stARTT (Rome, Simone Capra and Claudio Castaldo). The exhibition at MAXXI is curated by Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator MAXXI Architettura.

The projects of the five American competition finalists: FormlessFinder (New Haven, CT/Brooklyn, NY, Julian Rose and Garrett Ricciardi); Interboro Partners (Brooklyn, NY, Tobias Armborst, Daniel D'Oca and Georgeen Theodore); MASS Design Group (Boston, MA, Michael Murphy); Matter Architecture Practice (Brooklyn, NY, Sandra Wheeler and Alfred Zollinger); IJP Corporation Architects (London/Cambridge, MA, George L. Legendre). The exhibition at MoMA is curated by Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecure and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.