Curated by Mary Ceruti and Sarina Basta

This May, artists Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman will use recycled and scavenged materials to transform SculptureCenter into a network of pavilions hosting workshops, talks, and film screenings, and a platform for investigating urbanism, alternative design, and the possibilities for pedagogy and activism inherent therein. The project owes much to the countercultural movements of the 1960s (the search for low-cost, environmentally sound “appropriate technology” for developing nations, for example), but its roots go deeper: to the “adventure playgrounds” of the ’40s, where children were invited to create structures for play from discarded construction scraps. A module made in collaboration with students from the alternative high school City-as-School will provide a site-specific anchor, engaging urban design issues relevant to SculptureCenter’s Queens neighborhood—homework for the summer, indeed.

— Suzanne Hudson