Wendy 2.0 Debuts In Abu Dhabi For Sustainability Week

Architizer News

Wendy 2.0 Debuts In Abu Dhabi For Sustainability Week

January 17, 2013

Wendy, everyone’s favorite architectural avatar, is back! The spiky blue installation has relocated from the MoMA PS1 courtyard in Long Island City, New York to Abu Dhabi—we’re picturing an Indiana Jones-map montage right now—where she is headlining the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. Armed with upgrades and powered by solar energy, Wendy 2.0 takes her air-cleaning powers and sunny disposition abroad to the Emirate, where she fits right at home. Click through for more!

The installation was designed by Architizer sister-firm Hollwich Kushner (HWKN), who rebuilt the structure from scratch for its international debut. Presented by the Sheikha Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation with Masdar, Abud Dhabi’s renewable energy tech house, Wendy 2.0 gave the architects the opportunity to make the generational leap with their original design—a rarity in architecture, says HWKN co-principal Matthias Hollwich. The new and improved Wendy comes with an upgraded scaffolding system, some structural innovations, and enhanced water cannons and misters. Additionally, Masdar—the same Masdar which commissioned Norman Foster to design an eco-city—is supplying the solar power that will take the installation completely off-the-grid.

But don’t worry, Wendy is still very much the same as when we left her. The star-cluster shape is as exuberant as ever, and the titania nanofilm-coated fabric just as functional. The installation’s rapid and faithful reproduction may point to a new horizon of architectural production, one that mirrors and is even in sync with other markets, as in the cycles for cell phones and software. For now, the architects hope that this second iteration of Wendy will help spread their message of a proactive, fun, and eco-friendly architecture. “Wendy 2.0 is an opportunity to touch an even broader audience,” says HWKN co-principal Marc Kushner, “and raise awareness about the potential of the architecture that surrounds them.”