Public Farm at P.S.1’s Warm Up

THE PAGE
Andraos and Wood’s idea for P.F.1 draws on the feeling of May 1968, when French student activists’ rallying cry was “Sous les pavés la plage!” (“Under the paving stones, the beach,” with the beach symbolizing freedom.) At the museum, they have tweaked that slogan to stand for a new vision of liberation and leisure, the urban farm: “Sur les Pavés la Ferme!” (“Above the paving stones, the farm!”).

Here, WORK collaborated with design firm (and officemates) Project Projects, which is also contributing text and graphics to P.F.1. “When WORK asked us to work with them, we wanted to embody the spirit of ’70s environmental activism that this joint effort represents,” says Project Projects’ Prem Krishnamurthy.

Together they settled on an image that combines the graphical feel of student radicalism with pages from the 1975 eco-sci-fi classic Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach. “A lot of our ideas stem from visionary beginnings like the [1960s architecture] group Superstudio,” Wood says, “and the bookEcotopia, as a seminal science-fiction work, embodies the experimental quality we aim for. The text is also entertaining, and we want to harness ideas with the enjoyable to close the gap between architecture and fun.” The team also created our cover, whose pattern of circles is inspired by P.F.1’s tubes and columns.

THE PROJECT
On July 5, when revelers pour into P.S.1’s courtyard for the opening of its annual music-and-dance series, Warm Up, they will not find the urban beaches of years past; instead, they’ll see…an urban farm. The fully functioning, produce-growing design is by WORK Architecture Company, headed by Amale Andraos and Dan Wood. “P.S.1 has these incredible parties, and we wanted to introduce the ideas of urbanism and ecology, so we felt this to be the perfect intersection of the two,” says Andraos. Besides, she adds, “Who doesn’t like food at their parties?”The design, dubbed Public Farm 1 (or P.F.1), features a collection of suspended cardboard tubes topped with various growing greens; additional upright columns emit rural sounds, charge phones, offer seating and serve fresh juice.

—T.J. Carlin

Warm Up and P.F. 1 start July 5. For more info about the dance parties, go to ps1.org.