Plywood pavilion: a Folly for Long Island City’s Socrates Sculpture Park

Sitting across the water from Roosevelt Island with views of the Manhattan skyline beyond, the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City is a welcome pocket of greenery on the banks of New York's East River. Now over 25 years old, the park has been showcasing artworks since it was transformed from five acres of abandoned landfill into an open studio and exhibition space in the 1980s. One of the park's more recent calendar highlights is its annual Folly Programme sponsored by the Architectural League of New York, which each year, since its introduction in 2012, has enabled an early career architect or designer to install a site specific pavilion within the Park's grounds that explores the boundaries between architecture and sculpture.
This year, the coveted commission fell to Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim of Cambridge and Philadelphia-based firm IK Studio, whose proposal Torqueing Spheres was chosen from among 126 global submissions by a jury of five architects and artists including David Benjamin (The Living); Leslie Gill (Architect); Sheila Kennedy (Kennedy & Violich Architecture); Alyson Shotz (Artist); and Socrates Sculpture Park Executive Director John Hatfield.
Resembling a line of oversized geometric blooms, Torqueing Spheres sees a series of eight intertwining, half-domed forms of various scales join together to form a 28 x 20 ft meandering curved folly in the dappled light beneath the trees. Joined by hollow steel sections, the domes, made from decorative bent birch plywood, polyethylene and recycled wood with neoprene sleeves, the panels serve as deep self-supporting chambers in which visitors can stay a while and explore.
The duo's winning design was chosen by a jury of five architects from among 126 global submissions.
Called Torqueing Spheres the meandering folly is made up of eight intertwining, half-domed plywood forms that serve as a series of chambers for visitors to explore.
ADDRESS
32-01 Vernon Blvd
Long Island City
NY 11106, United States
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Ali Morris is a UK-based editor, writer and creative consultant specialising in design, interiors and architecture. In her 16 years as a design writer, Ali has travelled the world, crafting articles about creative projects, products, places and people for titles such as Dezeen, Wallpaper* and Kinfolk.
-
ICON 4x4 goes EV, giving their classic Bronco-based restomod an electric twist
The EV Bronco is ICON 4x4’s first foray into electrifying its range of bespoke vintage off-roaders and SUVs
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
‘Dressed to Impress’ captures the vivid world of everyday fashion in the 1950s and 1960s
A new photography book from The Anonymous Project showcases its subjects when they’re dressed for best, posing for events and celebrations unknown
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Inside Camperlab’s Harry Nuriev-designed Paris store, a dramatic exercise in contrast
The Crosby Studios founder tells Wallpaper* the story behind his new store design for Mallorcan shoe brand Camperlab, which centres on an interplay between ‘crushed concrete’ and gleaming industrial design
By Jack Moss Published
-
At home with Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão
we talk to artists about what they’re making, what’s making them tick, and the moments that made them. Tracked down at the foot of a volcano in Costa Rica, Adriana Varejão discusses her Oscar Niemeyer-designed house, the eroticism of pulsating meat, and her solo show ‘Talavera’, on now at Gagosian, New York
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Last updated
-
Architecture Club designs a new atelier for artist Monika Sosnowska in Warsaw
An architectural exercise in purity and restraint, Polish sculptor Monika Sosnowska’s new atelier is a simple concrete volume, and the first-built project of Basel-based architects Karolina Slawecka and Pawel Krzeminski under their new studio. Photographed by Hélène Binet, the radically simple atelier was featured in the Smart Art-themed November issue of Wallpaper* magazine (W*248)
By Harriet Thorpe Last updated
-
Modernism meets industry at Friche de l’Escalette, a French art dealer’s sculpture park
By Ellie Stathaki Last updated
-
Es Devlin triptych reimagines BIG’s new residential project in New York, The Eleventh
By Pei-Ru Keh Last updated
-
Field day: art and architecture collide at Albion Barn in Oxfordshire
By Harriet Thorpe Last updated
-
V.IB Architecture creates a bold industrial sculpture in Paris
By Jonathan Bell Last updated