Recent Young Architects Program winner to visit Stuckeman School

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Dream the Combine, the winner of the prestigious and ultra-competitive Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) PS1/MoMA Young Architects Program (YAP) in 2018, will visit Penn State on Feb. 19 as part of the Stuckeman School’s Lecture and Exhibit Series. Jennifer Newsom, co-founder of the firm, will present “Lacuna” at 6 p.m. in the Stuckeman Family Building Jury Space.

Established by Newsom and Tom Carruthers in Minneapolis in 2013, Dream the Combine’s work consists of site-specific large-scale public art installations that play with reflectivity and capitalize on the potential of the mirror. The duo works to investigate the conceptual overlaps in art, architecture and cultural theory through structures that disrupt assumed dichotomies and manipulate the boundary between real and illusory space.

The MoMA PS1/MoMA YAP challenges emerging architects to design a creative, sustainable outdoor installation in the MoMA PS1 courtyard, which is located in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, New York. The firm’s entry for the 2018 competition created a responsive, kinetic environment that featured nine intersecting elements arrayed across the entirety of the courtyard. Titled “Hide & Seek,” the installation consisted of moveable mirrors that offered surprising and dislocating perspectives of the courtyard and the crowd looking into the spaces. 

The firm’s work has been published widely by The New York Times, Log, Metropolis Magazine, Architect, Architectural Record, The Architects Newspaper and Dezeen. 

Newsom and Carruthers, who are partners in business and in life, met while pursuing their professional master of architecture degrees at the Yale School of Architecture. Their latest installation is “Lure,” which was recently on view at MadArt Studio in Seattle.

In addition to practicing with Dream the Combine, Newsom is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture.