Canopy: Moma / P.s.1 Young Architects Program
Canopy was a temporary structure built with green bamboo in P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centers courtyard, an art and music venue that attracts 8,000 revelers to its weekly Saturday Warm Up music parties every summer. In addition to visiting the museum, visitors also lounge, play, and dance to some of the most avant garde djs and groups to visit New York. On weekdays and Sundays, the space is frequented by a quieter audience of children and their families. An estimated 100,000 visitors viewed Canopy throughout its 5 month existence, as it underwent a slow temporal transformation as the freshly cut green bamboo turned from green to tan.
Canopy relied on a singular tectonic system to bind together provisions for overhead shade, structure and varying atmospheres, resulting in what the architects envisage as a 'deep landscape' that affects the entire depth of the courtyard. Canopys freshly cut green bamboo poles turned from green to tan over the summer. Pinches in the undulating lattice produced a range of shadow densities and patterns across the courtyard. Dips in the canopy defined rooms open to the sky, each with a distinct climatic environment for different modes of lounging: Pool Pad incorporated a large foam wading pool; Fog Pad was surrounded by fog nozzles that spread a cool halo of mist on revelers; Rainforest featured a sound environment and water misters that provided intermittent rain showers and randomly soaked the crowd; and Sand Hump's sandy cove maximized exposure to sun and shade
The English word "canopy" refers to both the overarching covering of a sky and the uppermost region of a forest. The architects developed the idea of a 'deep landscape' to stitch together the limits of the existing site (ground, concrete walls, sky) with one material system. Canopy reveals various transformations over time. The structure juxtaposes the degree to which a natural material can be geometrically manipulated and controlled with its unpredictable behavior over time. Varying humidity levels, exposure to the sun, pole diameter and orientation effect a gradient of changes in color and material properties. A parallel transformation occurs in the Rainforest, where the live planted bamboo, kept moist with water misters every half hour, steadily grows in height and produces new green shoots throughout the summer.
Construction team / materials
Canopy was built in situ over a period of 7 weeks by nARCHITECTS and their team of architecture students and recent graduates. Prior to construction, they spent 6 weeks on site testing each arc type to determine the maximum span, minimum bending radii and overlap dimensions. The structure utilizes 30,800 linear feet of freshly cut green Philostachys Aurea bamboo, spliced and bound together with 37,000 linear feet of stainless steel wire. The initial order of 1,100 bamboo poles was chopped, cleaned and shipped from Georgia in one week, so that it arrived as fresh as possible upon delivery. Once on site, the poles were stored in racks, covered with UV resistant tarp and watered twice a day to keep them green and flexible.
Process: 3D to 2D to construction
nARCHITECTS' challenge resided in the physical translation of a geometrically precise structure, using a natural material with inherently variable characteristics. Through trial and error, they invented a flexible set of principles, details and jury rigged tools that allowed them to solve a variety of structural conditions with a single material. Every arc in Canopy was digitally modeled in 3D, then exported as a 2D elevation drawing, with its exact length and intersection points indicated. The type, general shape and critical radius of the arc dictated the pole selection, orientation and splicing method. Since Canopy was designed as a three dimensional structural network, the arcs were subjected to more stress during erection than in the final stage. The architects devised a phasing sequence that optimized the structural capabilities of bamboo and minimized breakages. Starting with small areas of the canopy, the team erected structural spanning arcs first and non-supporting arcs second, repeating the sequence until it grew into the overall shape. Each arc was assembled on the ground by splicing together 22 foot long bamboo poles with stainless steel wire and marking off each intersection point. Their tips wrapped in neoprene, structural spanning arcs were inserted into the steel pipes welded to either ring beams or wall straps. Once erected into place, they were temporarily held at their intersections with other arcs with plastic zip ties. Matching the exact length of the drawn profile from the digital model naturally produces a close approximation in shape and height for each erected arc. However, the precise geometry is achieved by stretching surveying strings across critical gridlines, adjusting heights with temporary posts and nudging each arc into place before finally binding each intersection with wire. The wire creates a more rigid lattice and the final canopy acts as a multi-directional structural network of over 300 individual arcs, the shape of which is produced by the precise translation from the digital model.
