For the last eight years, the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York has held a competition to transform their outdoor courtyard into a party and event space. In past years, winning entries have evoked beaches and huge blooming flowers. This is the first year that their courtyard will be used to grow vegetables. The winning entry, “Sur les Paves, La Ferme” is from Work Architecture, a husband and wife team based in New York.

They envision, among other things, that tomatoes grown in their structure will be used to make Bloody Marys at the bar, not to mention barley and hops for a P.S.1 beer for the fall. From the New York Times article:

To organize the space they chose the heavy cardboard tubes — the largest is a yard in height, and in diameter — in part because of the shadows they would cast and because of their resilience. Columns will be bolted together to form a span that rises on either side of a pool like a large V.

Each tube will play its own role. Some will contain plantings on dirt shelves equipped with liner bags to prevent leakage.

There is a fabric tube that people can enter through a curtain “where you can hide from the party, if you’ve had enough,” Ms. Andraos said.

There will be two sound columns — one that plays farm sounds when you sit down, another in which you can look upward, see stars and hear crickets. There is a phone-charging column, a children’s grotto of columns with swings, an herb-growing column with circulating fans dispersing scents like basil or lavender, and a juicer column where fresh juice will be made and sold.

“It kind of hits a tenor of the times,” Mr. Bergdoll said. “It’s both a real and humorous response to sustainability.”

The annual competition is the Young Architects Program, so-called because its objective is “to identify and provide an outlet for emerging young talent in architecture, an ongoing mission of both MoMA and P.S.1.” (from the P.S.1 website)

I found this project via The Steel Yard Blog- thanks Clay!