At the Brooklyn Museum, for example, SITU transformed the Great Hall by wrapping its columns in a white fabric, creating new seating and over-sized, bending canopies. The result resembled a field of white mushrooms, or whirling dervishes caught in motion.
SITU’s most visible work to-date is likely their “Heartwalk” installation, which won the 2013 Times Square Valentine’s Day Heart Competition. The heart-shaped “room within the city” is made entirely of wood salvaged from boardwalks destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. SITU says that Heartwalk “draws inspiration from the collective experience of Hurricane Sandy and the love that binds the city’s citizens together during trying times.”
SITU is currently reimagining the New York Hall of Science’s design lab in the building’s central pavilion. The permanent space will include new hands-on workshops and an interactive “treehouse.”
In the coming months, SITU’s work will appear across New York City on the side of a food truck called Snowday. The truck, which boasts a snowflake made of reclaimed wood, is part of Drive Change, an organization that provides job opportunities in the food truck industry to the previously incarcerated.
The relatively young firm only plans to build on their impressive portfolio this coming year. As Snowday hits the streets and the new exhibition spaces open at the New York Hall of Science, SITU will be preparing for two new exhibitions, one in Berlin and one at MOMA.
SITU is planning to work on more permanent projects and has ambitions to design buildings in the near future. But Samuels said the installations that SITU has created thus far are just as much architecture as any new building or large-scale project.
