MoMA PS1’s courtyard will get a kinetic, participatory installation this summer

There may be a nor’easter barreling toward New York City this week, but MoMA PS1 is already looking ahead to summer: The institution today announced the winner of its annual Young Architects Program competition, which gives up-and-coming designers a chance to take over the museum’s Long Island City courtyard.

This year’s winner is Hide & Seek, created by Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers of the Minneapolis-based firm Dream The Combine, who are working in collaboration with Clayton Binkley of ARUP. As in years past, there’s a strong participatory element to the project, though there’s no water-spraying “party wall” or wading pools this time around.

Instead, Hide & Seek is “inspired by the crowd, the street, and the jostle of relationships found in the contemporary city”; there will be nine different elements, including seating (including a giant hammock!), cooling areas, and a runway that should prove pretty popular during the museum’s Warm Up dance parties.

Three of those structures will also have giant mirrors suspended on frames at either end, which will move with the wind or as they’re jostled by folks in the courtyard; they’ll reflect what’s happening in the space itself, as well as the streetscape outside, “permitting dislocating views and unique spatial relationships,” per a press release.

It’s also meant to be experienced differently at different times of day; Carruthers told the Architects Newspaper that “[w]e are trying to create an installation that’s not just an object, but that is able to be responsive at different times of use.”

A specific opening date hasn’t been announced just yet, but expect the installation to open sometime in June.