'Lumen' Opens at MoMA PS1

The annual program – a summer ritual that parallels the Serpentine Pavilion in London – gives a young architect the opportunity to build something practical yet experimental, occupying the courtyard of MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. The functional considerations are straightforward: provide shade for visitors, many of them attending the museum's sweaty Warm Up concert series; provide a water feature; and provide some seating. These concerns become starting points for tangents into innovative materials, illustrations of infrastructure, or other areas of experimentation.

For Jenny Sabin, head of her eponymous studio based in Ithaca, New York, the installation offered the opportunity to explore innovative materials and digital fabrication. Her competition-winning Lumen is made of over one million yards of digitally knitted and robotically woven fiber – "photo-luminescent and solar active yarns that absorb, collect, and deliver light," according to Sabin's website. During the day the installation appears white, but color is embedded in some of the knitted panels, a fact made most dramatic in the evening when the canopy is awash in color that is accentuated by special lighting.

Lumen is on view at MoMA PS1 from 29 June to 4 September 2017.