Toshihiro Oki architect pc

Toshihiro Oki architect’s tree wood is the winner of the 2013 year “Folly” competition — an extraordinary opportunity for emerging architects and designers to experiment and build large-scale projects for outdoor exhibition.

Socrates Sculpture Park and the League launched “Folly” in 2012 as a residency and exhibition program to explore the intersections between architecture and sculpture. “Folly” has grown from a pilot initiative to a highly anticipated competition — submissions increased by 40% from last year — for emerging architects and designers to conceive, design, build, and exhibit original works in the public realm.

Tree wood will be a rigid yet airy geometrical wooden structure placed within a grove of trees — a lush and dense area at Socrates Sculpture Park. Visitors will peer into the structure through the floor beams where a formal, ornate chandelier will be suspended.  The installation creates a dialogue between built structures and systems with the irregular and organic.

Toshihiro Oki architect — consisting of team members Toshihiro Oki, Jen Wood and Jared Diganci — wasselected from over 150 submissions by a jury of architects and artists who reviewed over 150 submissions, including Michael Arad, Architect, Partner, Handel Architects; Orly Genger, Visual Artist; John Hatfield, Executive Director, Socrates Sculpture Park; Granger Moorhead, Architect, Principal, Moorhead & Moorhead; and Billie Tsien, Architect, Principal, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

“Folly” is an interpretation of the architectural folly. Especially popular among the Romantics of the 18th and 19th centuries, architectural follies are small-scale structures, which often have no discernible purpose, that are placed within a garden or landscape as a means to draw the eye to specific points or to frame a view. The folly is a perfect subject for architects to investigate materiality, spatial interaction, and concepts about our urban and natural environment.

Visit the Architectural League for more information on the winning project and detailing the competition process, including prominent architectural themes woven throughout proposals: Read more at www.archleague.org. The winner of the 2012 “Folly” competition was Curtain, a project conceived by architects Jerome W. Haferd and K Brandt Knapp.  Curtain, which closed on March 31st, combined minimal structural framing with a mutable plastic chain that bisected the landscape from multiple angles, creating a voluminous whimsical interior space.

SUPPORT

Socrates Sculpture Park’s Exhibition Program is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Mark di Suvero, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, and Spacetime C.C. This  program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and by public funds from the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Special thanks to the City of New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall, City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, City Councilmembers Jimmy. Van Bramer and Peter F. Vallone Jr., and the Department of Parks & Recreation, Commissioner Veronica White.