This Is Not a Wall: Collected Short Stories on CODA'S Party Wall at MoMA PS1

This Is Not A Wall is conceived as an epic of one architectural entity’s lifespan, depicted through a unique collection of illustrated short stories. The entity in question is the temporary pavilion Party Wall, designed by CODA as the winning entry of the 2013 Young Architects Program organized by MoMA PS1. This Is Not A Wall recounts Party Wall’s complete 9-month lifespan, from its initial nomination in November 2012, through its design-build process, to its dismantling at summer’s end in September 2013. The central intention of the collection is to chronicle Party Wall’s unique contextual environment, and elucidate upon its role as a mediator of complex relationships amid the individuals, institutions, and companies to which it owes its existence.

The experimental nature of this publication ― outside what is often practiced in the architectural monograph ― is to intertwine critical texts with personal accounts from a range of perspectives: in short, to consider a work of architecture as a performative endeavor built upon a full chorus of disparate voices. This Is Not A Wall’s aim is to craft a bookwork in the same spirit as the original act – by emphasizing various modes of language to tell a collective story, showcasing episodes with a range of durations, formalities, and orientations. In this way, the book accompanies a reader from Party Wall’s set to its strike, in both sickness and health, witnessing the changes of tack, pleasant surprises, unforeseen setbacks, and logistical successes that comprise any complex process of collaborative labor.

This Is Not A Wall also works to frame Party Wall in a larger contemporary discourse. Concerns include: architecture and its correlation to installation; experientiality and public performance; and a reconsideration of the sign in architecture as it pertains to legibility and meaning. Longer, essay-style stories by architectural journalist Cynthia Davidson, art historian Lisa Pincus, CODA principle Caroline O’Donnell, among others, will punctuate additional story pieces MoMA curator Pedro Gadanho, MAXXI director Pippo Ciorra, architect Peter Eisenman, previous YAP winner Matthias Hollwich, alongside project participants and other observers – from PS1 janitors, to local skateboarders, to construction volunteers. By stressing Party Wall’s creative process as a distinct product of its context, spatial-temporal constraints, and collected voices, the book is equal parts an analytical handbook of the competition & design process, an account of its evolving construction, and a poignant description of its lived experience.

Through acts of reportage, recollection and remix, This Is Not A Wall assembles a total of 75 individual contributors in the form of 75 unique stories. Its length is 40,000 words. It is accompanied by approximately 150 images (halftone b/w, with selected color plates) – including inserts of process documentation, design drawings, and on-site photography. Stories can be read as individual stand-alone pieces; collectively, the stories form a larger documentary testament to one architectural and herculean effort. This Is Not A Wall opposes the notion of architecture as made by one master and appreciated by one audience. Through these many voices, one story will be told; a story that brings to light the various makers and thinkers that make any architectural work come into being and meaning.

Caroline O'Donnell is principal of design firm CODA, author of the book Niche Tactics, and director of the M.Arch program at Cornell University, where she is also the editor-in-chief of the Cornell Journal of Architecture.

Steven Chodoriwsky is an artist, designer, and writer. He is the 2016-17 Peter Reyner Banham Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University at Buffalo.