Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times reports that the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 have selected architects Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith of MOS as the winners of the tenth annual Young Architects Program. In their official proposal, “afterparty,” the architects note that their design is meant to reflect current economic realities. Sample and Meredith describe their installation as “a temporary urban shelter and passive cooling station,” which will support the outdoor events and concerts during P.S. 1’s Warm Up summer program. The courtyard’s existing shaded concrete walls will cool the space, and MOS will build concrete water troughs that will be drawn up through the chimneys by induction, they said, creating a breeze. The courtyard installation will be open to the public in late June. The architects were inspired in part by the architect Louis Kahn, who “could go between high tech and very primitive,” Meredith said. Sample added the thatching for “afterparty” was created with the textile artist Anni Albers in mind.

In other news, the Washington Post’s Jacqueline Trescott reports that the newly installed secretary of the Smithsonian Institution has announced that he has implemented a hiring freeze and eliminated salary increases and bonuses for one class of its highest-paid employees. G. Wayne Clough has also asked several departments to reduce their current-year budgets by 5 percent to 8 percent. The action, taken because of the decrease in the Smithsonian's endowment by 25 percent last year and the uncertain economic future, follows a similar hiring ban, started last October, in the ranks of employees who are paid by the federal government. The Smithsonian, the largest museum and research complex in the world, is financed through private funds and public appropriations from Congress. Public funds account for 70 percent of its one-billion-dollar annual budget. “We are concerned about our financial situation,” said Clough, who after six months on the job was officially installed yesterday as the twelfth secretary of the Smithsonian.