Just in from MoMA, the announcement that the New Haven and Cambridge-based self-proclaimed “state-of-the-art-weirdos” (nice!) firm MOS has won the twelfth annual Young Architects competition to create an immersive environment that pushes the dynamical architecturality of architectonical dynamism slash gives the trancers a place to chill the frak out. The competition—won by everyone from South African pin-up Lindy Roy to urban farmers WorkAC to seventies porno-alien designer Hernan Diaz Alonso—has the same brief every year: to make a bunch of sheltered spaces, provide some sort of cooling water elements, and jack up the institution’s awesome factor. Let’s take a look at Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample’s firm MOS’ afterparty.

Envisioned as an “urban shelter,” afterparty will serve as a cooling escape at the heart of P.S.1’s Warm Up music series. Before visitors enter the courtyard, a series of tall hut-like “chimneys” with dark thatched skin will be visible from the street. The interior of the conical shelter will provide shade, similar to a Bedouin tent in which the dark textile creates its own microclimate shielding from the summer heat. Cool air from the thermal mass of the courtyard’s shaded concrete walls and concrete water troughs located in the center of the structure will be drawn up through a series of cooling chimneys by induction. This will create a breeze and a “cool down” atmosphere for the active Warm Up crowd.

Aside from any use of the word “active” making us think of either hamsters or geriatrics, and aside from the released rendering looking a bit like Fun With Rhino, and triply aside from the greenwashing nod towards microclimatology, we could, with caveats, get behind—or under, or on top of, and we mean that literally not winkingly—this one.

What’s interesting is how much of a departure from last year’s stepped-farm winner this fractally undulating proposal is. It’s a lot closer to earlier winners—OBRA’s and SHoP’s come to mind (and not only for their acronymism)—and a lot less fascinating than Public Farm #1. Part of this is a problem with the competition itself; after twelve years of creating constrained design in a limited site, it’s impossible not to gradually tend towards repetition if not replication, reference if not adoption. And part of this is a problem with architecture schools (note, foreshadowing, recurring theme ahead) and how they teach us to represent architecture. MOS’ renderings look cool and trippy and hard to make, but having struggled through a Rhino class under the graceful tutelage of Chris Lasch, it’s hard to look at the design and not see randomness coupled with self-conscious articulation. Barry B of MoMA sees “vernacular village structures” and “opened ruined vaults of the Roman forum” in the chimney-like pulls of plane up, and the spider-like pulls of shelter down, but really? Is it there?

We’ll have to wait to experience it ourselves, when it opens in late June. See you at PJ’s DJ.