Latest News

Since its inception, FIGMENT has celebrated and supported creative expression by artists of all kinds, and invited every individual to explore his or her inner artist to create work to share. While we do not accept corporate donations to support our nonprofit mission, we have made it our policy in the past to accept donations from many community groups and events. 

This year, FIGMENT has decided to refuse a donation from a community event for the first time in our history in refusing any donation offered to it by Santacon. It has become clear to us that, while Santacon was originally a fundamentally creative and expressive event, it has become something else in recent years. Many residents in the neighborhoods that Santacon has visited have had extremely negative experiences, which have been well documented in local media. As an organization that values community, and that works to build, grow, and nurture local communities through art and creativity in 10 cities, FIGMENT cannot be associated with an event that so many people feel represents a danger to their neighborhoods.

FIGMENT creates free arts events in 10 cities around the world that invite everyone to create and share. We believe that everyone is an artist, that everyone has something to say, and that through creativity we can build strong and diverse communities. FIGMENT is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization entirely funded by grants and individual donations. We appreciate your support in creating free arts events and experiences that everyone is welcome to participate in as a creator.

Open Call: Submissions for 2015 Minigolf Course

Join us for a design meeting on Wednesday, December 17th 6:30-7:30pm at CMA, 103  Charlton St., New York, NY 10014.

Photo by Erik McGregor. Attack of King Kristy by Campus Operandi

From Here to There

Welcome to 2015! Over the past seven summers, FIGMENT has created a free, artist-designed minigolf course on Governors Island in New York City. This course, one of a number of summer-long programs created by FIGMENT in addition to its weekend-long FIGMENT NYC event, has received substantial amount of critical acclaim and media attention, and has delighted hundreds of thousands of visitors of all ages.

As FIGMENT's mission is to build community through participatory art, we have found that artist-designed minigolf provides a great template on which artists can envision a creative framework in which others can interact. For the visitor to the island, minigolf provides a basic point of entry to participatory art: it's easy for almost anyone to pick up a golf club, ball, and scorecard and interact with the art!

Photo by Scott Lynch. City Bikes by Gary Dolan

Our theme for the 2015 FIGMENT minigolf course is "From Here to There."

This year's proposals should reflect artists' interpretation of the concept of transportation, whether across state lines or between states of mind. With the vast choices for getting yourself or getting "goods" from one place to another, how where you are now to where you want to be? Our aspiration is to create artist-designed, free to the public, minigolf course on Governors Island (our eighth annual course!) that captures the multitude of transportation options from the past, present and future; highlights the positive and/or negative social, economic, or environmental impact of transportation; or interprets abstract transportation practices such as telepathy or psychotherapy. Designs should interpret this year's theme with as much diversity of perspective as possible. You can interpret the theme literally, metaphorically, or with as much poetic license as you like. Be bold!

A jury will evaluate proposals based on the following criteria: creativity, durability, playability, feasibility, adherence to theme, budget and community involvement. Please be sure not to use any proprietary, copyrighted, or trademarked symbols or characters in your proposal.

Deadline: March 1, 2015

Download the complete submission packet.

Photo by Anthony Collins. Hoods and Woods by Vanessa Khouri

FIGMENT, the Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA) of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (AIANY), and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) are excited to announce the finalists for the 2015 City of Dreams Pavilion Design Competition:

• The Pulp Pavilion by MegaZoo (Melody Rees and Arthur Azoulai)

• Billion Oyster Pavilion by BanG studio (Babak Bryan AIA – principal; Henry Grosman – principal; Suzie Betts – with Sam Janis, Harbor School/Billion Oyster Project)

• Tied Together by Hou de Sousa (Nancy Hou & Josh de Sousa)

• Organic Growth by Izaskun Chinchilla Architects (Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Adriana Cabello Plasencia, Alejandro Espallargas Omedas and Alfonso Aracil Sánchez)

• Galassia by Michele Zanella

This year’s finalists incorporate reclaimed and biodegradable materials, educate visitors about harbor restoration, and raise awareness about recycling regulations.

The Pulp Pavilion

by MegaZoo (Melody Rees and Arthur Azoulai)

Made from cast paper pulp, this pavilion is constructed out of recycled material and is biodegradable. The cradle to cradle design is comprised of many cone shaped modules that are tightly packed to form a domed archway. On the exterior, the design celebrates the inherent qualities of the fibrous material. On the interior, color is used to celebrate the modularity of the design and filter light to create dramatic and contrasting effect for individuals who reside within. Each cone is cast from a unique and fibrous mix consisting of recycled paper and grass seeds. Its impact is net zero and it actually contributes to the positive biomass of the earth upon demolition. This temporary structure is a showcase for the potentials of new biodegradable material technologies within the design and construction industry.

Billion Oyster Pavilion

by BanG studio (Babak Bryan AIA – principal; Henry Grosman – principal; Suzie Betts – with Sam Janis, Harbor School/Billion Oyster Project)

Our proposal for the Billion Oyster Pavilion joins two of Governors Island’s most exciting enterprises: Figment’s City of Dreams Pavilion and The New York Harbor School’s Billion Oyster Project. The materials that form the woven canopy (steel rebar, nylon rope, and hose clamps) are specifically used in their harbor restoration work. Additionally, the base of our Pavilion is made up of custom-cast “Reef Balls,” a restoration device that the school will also use as part of their habitat creation effort. By donating the entire pavilion to the Harbor School, its materials will be completely re-used on the island, eliminating the need to further transport.

Tied Together

by Hou de Sousa (Nancy Hou & Josh de Sousa)

Tied Together is a pavilion made out of aluminum pipes and strands of rope braided from 38,000 repurposed plastic bags (the amount NYC wastes every 90 seconds). The project provides a venue for events and performances, while serving as a great picnic area, and functioning as an iconic meeting point for visitors to Governors Island. From afar, Tied Together appears to be a solid sculptural object, but from up close, the overlapping composition of rope and linear gaps produces a moiré effect which visually shifts and alters the surrounding landscape as one moves between the pavilion’s spaces. Currently, less than 1% of New York City’s plastic bags are recycled, even though they account for 22% of all the plastics sent to landfills. The NY Plastic Bag Reduction, Reuse, and Recycling Act was passed in 2009 and requires medium to large scale retailers to accept plastic bags for recycling. Tied Together aims to raise awareness for this law and thereby increase its impact.

Organic Growth

by Izaskun Chinchilla Architects (Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Adriana Cabello Plasencia, Alejandro Espallargas Omedas and Alfonso Aracil Sánchez)

The natural structures are adaptive and can grow up and down in response to context and time. The morphology of the hydrangea plan has been particularly useful. Mophead flowers are large dome-shaped flower heads. Through it’s growth, the plant maintains a good balance with the environment, shouldn’t the ‘city of dreams’ do the same? Architecture has to learn to adapt to changing social requirements and ecological dynamics. The philosophy of organic growth: maintaining a flexibility of ideas that is adaptive becomes crucial. This logic also generates a biophilic component, learning from nature helps to take care of human wellbeing naturally, beautifully and intuitively. 

Galassia

by Michele Zanella

Galassia is a free standing, geometrically rigorous yet formally expressive, self-sustaining pavilion. The nature of its shape, deriving from the minimal surface generated between two circular loops, is contemporarily expression of maximum structural efficiency and of refined formal completeness. Paced by the array of a bamboo structure and of a densely spaced set of tensed ropes, the pavilion is simultaneously identifying its structural, formal and functional content. Galassia is the depiction of flawless dynamism and internal movements within the city of the future and is the materialization of the concepts of efficiency, sustainability and aesthetic qualities combined together. A pavilion as the architectural crystallization of a collective dream: the process of a sustainable urban metamorphosis.

About the Competition

The City of Dreams Pavilion will be a gathering place for people to meet, learn about the arts programs on the island, enjoy a performance or lecture, and experience the interaction of art and the historic context of Governors Island. Our theme for the pavilion, the City of Dreams, points toward the future. If we imagine a future New York City where anything is possible, what would it look like? In our wildest and most optimistic dreams, what is the future of the city? The goal is to create a pavilion that has a net zero impact and that serves as a prototype for a new, truly sustainable, way of thinking about design and construction.

The current state of the world is such that both economic and natural resources are extremely limited. A new way of thinking is necessary to solve the problems that the world faces. Inevitably, the result will be a change in the basic practices that have driven the world to its current state. One place to start to activate and energize these changes is within the architecture and design community, where the movement toward sustainable design has only scratched the surface of what is possible and necessary.

The winner will be selected by a jury of leading architects and other industry professionals in November 2014. The jury meets again later this month to review revised design proposals and a winning design will be announced in December. The pavilion will be installed on the island in June for the 2015 summer season, pending permit approvals.

All renderings (c) the artists