"Folly" is an annual competition among emerging architects to design and build a large-scale project for public exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. Below, we highlight the entry of the winning team, who will design and build their project over several months during a residency at Socrates. To read more about Folly 2014, including several notable competition entries and some recurring themes that emerged in this year’s proposals, click here.
Description by The Architectural League of New York.
Conflating the form of an overturned ship and a typical suburban house, SuralArk will provide shelter for respite and contemplation for thousands of park visitors this spring and summer. The large-scale installation - part ship, part house – will span more than 50 feet with an elevation of 16 feet. Representative of the increasingly blurred lines between city, suburban environments, and rural living, Austin+Mergold’s SuralArk will be covered by a patchwork of vinyl siding – a typical material often used on nearby Queens residences. At Socrates, SuralArk will be light permeable and emit a warm glow as the sun bleeds through its surface. The upturned ark echoes the park’s past while considering the future, as a possible escape from rising tides that submerged the park in October 2012 during Super Storm Sandy.
Description by Architects.
Noah’s Ark, after it landed on Mount Ararat, became perhaps the first architectural folly – an imposing fanciful, yet purposeless structure: a boat with no water around, a house with no inhabitants, a simple hulking mass of a conflicted typology.
SuralArk (SA) is an American vernacular interpretation of the original. Made of 2x6 lumber and vinyl siding, the SA has its material origins in the American suburbia that is surprisingly close to NYC (incidentally, there is a vinyl sided house just across the street from Socrates Park entrance) and its formal roots as a (discarded) upturned ship cast ashore. Whether this was once a house in Levittown now on its way to becoming a boat, or a new hybrid house-boat under construction on the shore of East River in anticipation of the next hurricane flood is not entirely clear. And visitor is invited inside, under the siding canopy, to rest upon a foam bench (EPS foam is used in both house and ship construction, and one of the leading contributors to landfill waste) and contemplate the present horizon of Socrates park and NYC, the past, as well as forthcoming great floods.
This year’s proposal beat out 171 submissions from 17 countries. SuralArk was selected by a jury made up of Chris Doyle, Artist; John Hatfield, Socrates Sculpture Park; Enrique Norten, TEN Arquitectos; Lisa Switkin, James Corner Field Operations; and Ada Tolla, LOT-EK.
About the Designers.
Austin + Mergold is an architecture and landscape design practice established in Philadelphia in 2007 by architects Aleksandr Mergold and Jason Austin. Austin and Mergold were winners of The Architectural League Prize in 2010.
Folly 2014
SuralArk. A project by Austin + Mergold with Marc Krawitz.
On view.- May 11—August 3, 2014.
Venue.- Socrates Sculpture Park. 32-01 Vernon Boulevard at Broadway. Long Island City. New York. US.
The park is open 365 days a year from 10 a.m. until sunset. Admission is free.
Beginning May 2014, the park will provide a free shuttle service to/from nearby cultural attractions. For more information about visiting and Long Island City Art Shuttle information, click here.
