Giant water-purifying vertical garden pops up at MoMA PS1

Moma PS1 Cosmo Summer Session

According to the World Water Council, 1.1 billion people around the world currently live without access to clean drinking water, and the United Nations predicts that 1,800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025. COSMO, which was the winning submission in MoMA PS1's 2015 Young Architects Program Competition to design a temporary pavilion for the museum's courtyard, seeks to raise awareness around those staggering statistics.

Cosmo MOMA PS1 Lead

What would you get if a terrarium and a Brita water filter had a very large baby? We're not sure we'd want to know but it would probably look at lot like COSMO, a massive water-purifying vertical garden that is now on view at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City. Conceived by architect Andrés Jaque and his team at Office for Political Innovation, the carefully orchestrated amalgamation of aqua hoops, purple tubes and hanging orbs of greenery was unveiled this week in the museum's courtyard. Designed as a way to call attention to the global water crisis, the playful but purposeful structure will use a series of processes to purify 3,000 gallons of water every four days while also acting as a source of shade during the museum's popular Warm-Up summer music events.

Moma PS1 Cosmo Warm-Up

The contest, now in its 16th year, stipulates that a water feature be included in the selected pavilion design, but Jaque decided to take it a step further and make the process of water filtration the main focus of his team's creation.

Moma PS1 Cosmo YAP

In addition to providing shade and seating for visitors during PS1's summer concerts, COSMO will be hard at work pumping water through customized irrigation components, engineered with the help of BAC Engineering and Consultancy, that can filter about 3,000 gallons of water every four days. 

Moma PS1 Cosmo

The purification process will be made visible to partygoers via a bright light within the elasticized plastic mesh at the center of the ecosystem that will glow at the end of each water filtration cycle.

Cosmo MOMA PS1 Andres Jaque

Jaque hopes that COSMO will continue to serve as a replicable model for large-scale water filtration after its temporary stay at PS1 ends in the fall.

Cosmo MOMA PS1 Hoops

COSMO will be on view at MoMA PS1 through September 7, 2015.

Cosmo MOMA PS1 Water Filtering Plants