COSMO: Give me a pipe and I will move/celebrate the Earth
by Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation

Winner of the 2015 Young Architects Program at The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, New York.

More than 2 billion gallons of water circulate everyday beneath New York City. COSMO is a movable artifact, made out of customized irrigation components, to make visible and enjoyable the so-far hidden urbanism of pipes we live by. An assemblage of ecosystems, based on advanced environmental design, engineered to filter and purify 3.000 gallons of water; eliminating suspended particles and nitrates, balancing the PH, and increasing the level of dissolved oxygen.

The United Nations estimates that by 2025 two thirds of the global population will live in countries that lack sufficient water. COSMO is designed as both an offline and an online prototype. Its purpose it to trigger awareness, and to be easily reproduced all around the world, giving people access to drinking water, and to a dialogue about it. But above all, COSMO is a party-artifact that moves to go there wherever the party happens. It is a device meant to gather people together, as pleasant and climatically comfortable as a garden and at the same time as visually rich as a mirrored disco ball. As a result of a complex biochemical design, its stretched-out plastic mesh glows automatically whenever its water has been purified. With COSMO, the party is literally lit up every time the environment is being protected.

CREDITS

COSMO

Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation

Andrés Jaque, Patrick Craine, Jocelyn Froimovich, Roberto González García

Laura Mora, Sebastian Bech-Ravn, Yannan Chen, Ilgaz Kayaalp, Nicolò Lawanski, Jorge López Conde, Senne Meesters, Jorge Noguera Facuseh, James Quick, Jarča Slamova

Research on the politics of water

Iván López Munuera

Research on urban infrastructures and water in New York

Esteban de Guido de Backer

Structure Engineering: BAC Engeneering and Consultancy Group

Xavier Aguiló i Aran, Rodrigo Martín, Jaume Vallès, Hugo Díez

Ecosystem Design: Asepma

Jochen Scheerer

Hydraulic Engineering: ARUP

Sebastian Lopez, David Dubrow

Electrical Engineering: ARUP

Michael Incontrera

Lighting Engineering

Antonia Peón-Veiga

NYU Department of Interaction Science

Arlen Bitsky, Ernie Gerardo, Hovsep Agop, Oskar Noam, Anneka Goss, Charles Deluga, Omayeli Arenyeka, Leslie Martinez, Sriya Sarkar, Nadia Palachkina, Dana Karwas

Models, web platform and app

Miguel Mesa del Castillo, Joaquín García Vincente, Anna Melgarejo, Tatiana Poggi, FABLAB, PROYECTOS ARQUITECTÓNICOS, UNIVERSIDAD DE ALICANTE, AD HOC

Photography Director: Imagen Subliminal

Miguel de Guzmán

Audiovisuals: Bollería Industrial

Paula Currás, Ana Olmedo, Eugenio Fernández Sánchez, Enrique Ventosa

Voice artist

Lee Buckley

NYC Department of Environmetal Protection

Corinne Martin

Kim Estes-Fradis

Ecosystemic Production

Michelles Hofet, Abreu Lucas, Rennie Lauren Jones, J. P. Buonocore, Yoonseok Lee, Michelle Ida Kleinman, Yannan Chen, Jiaying Fan, Dihua Yan

Botanical Advise: Queens Botanical Garden

Rebecca Wolf

Gardens and Ecosystems

Balmori Associates, Camilla Hammer, GRNASFCK, Julia Frederick, Patio Interior and Marc Pascal, Regina Galvanduque and Andrés Mier y Terán, wHY, Paula Livingstone, Sofia Armanet, Verdant Gardens

Advise

Storefront for Art and Architecture, Pepe Cobo Gallery, Queens Botanical Garden