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Pedro & Juana’s urban jungle installation, Hórama Rama, opens at MoMA PS1

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Jackie Wei Green Jackie Wei Green Americas Head of Communications,Los Angeles
28 June 2019

On June 28, MoMA PS1 visitors had their first chance to experience Hórama Rama, an epic new installation by Mexico City-based architecture firm Pedro & Juana. Arup’s structural, plumbing and lighting teams worked closely with Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss, founders of Pedro & Juana, to help them realize the ambitious “urban jungle” concept that won this year’s Young Architects Program, organized by the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1.

Loosely translated to ‘spectacle of branches,’ Hórama Rama is a 40-foot tall, 90-foot wide cylindrical panoramic print (or cyclorama) of a jungle that appears to hover atop the museum’s concrete courtyard, supported by a scaffold tower. The installation invites viewers to contemplate the ongoing interplay of the natural world and the engineered environment, with an interior evoking a tropical rainforest and an exterior studded with wooden bristles that seem to fend off the encroaching urban sprawl.

Arup’s structural engineers provided early concept design of the scaffold tower used to create the cyclorama. Developed using nonlinear analysis techniques, Arup’s solution eliminated the need for ground anchors to tie down the structure under wind loads and minimized the overall materials required in the scaffolding contractor’s final design of the system. Arup also completed the detailed design of the exterior timber modules and their attachments, working with Pedro & Juana to develop simple, easily installed scaffold connections.

When designing a lighting scheme for the cyclorama, our lighting specialists began by examining the properties of the materials to get a sense of how the experience of being inside the installation would change throughout the day. By using omni-directional electric lighting sources placed at strategic points within the scaffolding and wood to create a jungle of shadows on the cyclorama surface, the team effectively “brought the outside in.” 

 
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Hórama Rama provided a playground of materials for light to interact, from the mesh jungle panorama to the ‘undulating’ field of exterior wooden hairs. Our approach was to analyze the way that the installation would be rendered by daylight, and then design the electrical lighting scheme to transform the experience from day to night, collapsing and expanding the many layers of the structure, depending on the viewer’s perspective ” Xena Petkanas Lighting Consultant, Arup

For the past twenty years, The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program offered emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present innovative projects, challenging each year’s winners to develop creative designs for a temporary and sustainable outdoor installation. Arup has provided design services for many of the program’s winning entries.

We congratulate Pedro & Juana on this distinguished achievement. Hórama Rama will be on view at MoMA PS1 through September 2, 2019.

 
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Loosely translated to ‘spectacle of branches,’ the Hórama Rama is a 40-foot tall, 90-foot wide cylindrical panoramic print (or cyclorama) of a jungle.