Prepare to get the song “Windy” stuck in your head. According to HWKN principal Mark Kushner, that 1967 bit of bubblegum was the inspiration for giving the name “Wendy” to his firm’s installation at the New York contemporary art space P.S.1. Part architectural experiment and part well-branded cartoon character, the giant blue sea urchin straddles a wall on one side of the courtyard at the Museum of Modern Art-affiliated former school building in Queens. Stretched across an open armature supported by a cube of scaffolding, its nylon spines have been treated with a solution of titanium nanoparticles, which, according to the firm, will skim pollutants out of the air. “It takes nitrogen dioxide, the stuff that comes out of tailpipes, turns it into a neutral compound, and then rainwater deposits it down to the ground,” said Kushner at an opening reception for the project. “We’ll take the equivalent of 260 off the cars off of the road this summer.”
Wendy will also have more visible effect on the climate in P.S.1’s courtyard. The blue creature houses several fans inside her spines to cool off visitors to the museum’s Warm-Up series of events, outdoor dance parties that take place in the courtyard every Saturday from July 7 through September 8. They get help from a series of pools, a continuous spray of mist, and periodic bursts of water that shoot from one of her spines.
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