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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

FIGMENT is now accepting proposals for the NYC 2015 Summer-Long Sculpture Program

FIGMENT is a free, annual celebration of participatory art and culture that began on Governors Island in 2007. It has since expanded to ten cites in three countries on two continents. In New York, in addition to the FIGMENT NYC Weekend EVENT, FIGMENT has hosted an Interactive Sculpture Program on Governors Island since 2008.

We invite you to submit a proposal for this year’s Sculpture Program. We intend to select 3-5 large-scale interactive sculptures that are daring, creative, and durable. The work must survive the elements for four months and withstand constant interactivity with the public. We intend to offer each chosen sculpture a budget of $3,000 - $5,000. However, if your vision exceeds this budget and you are driven to reach your goal, we can collaborate with you to help raise the additional funds.

Deadline

January 15, 2015

Information Session

Thursday, November 20th at 7 PM

WeWork Lounge, 154 Grand Street, Soho

This optional session gives you the chance to meet the curators, ask questions, and learn more about past successful projects and common pitfalls. Please RSVP.

Proposal Packet

The proposal packet provides details on how to submit your proposal, all requirements, tips, and images of the location and past projects.

See more photos in our Flickr gallery

If you have any questions at all please address them to [email protected]

We look forward to receiving your entry by 11:59pm ET on January 15, 2015, via email to [email protected] (full instructions in the FIGMENT Summer-Long Sculpture 2015 Call for Proposals.pdf file).

Good luck!

AIANY and SEAoNY team up with FIGMENT to bring the City of Dreams Pavilion to Governors Island each summer

The Governors Cup construction. Image by Chu Yang.

There’s a stunning new architectural pavilion on Governors Island this summer, thanks to over 100 volunteers and 120 donors

The Governors Cup Pavilion hovers among a cluster of trees on the south end of the Parade Ground. CDR Studio designed and constructed the pavilion specifically for the 2014 FIGMENT program. Visitors are invited to go inside the structure made of 30,000 reclaimed plastic cups that otherwise would have been tossed in the trash. The Governors Cup is the winner of the 2014 City of Dreams Pavilion competition, part of FIGMENT NYC, an annual free participatory summer-long arts event that has returned to Governors Island for the 8th time.

FIGMENT NYC is now accepting entries for the 2015 City of Dreams Pavilion design competition

More photos of the Governors Cup are available at Inhabitat.

Each year, FIGMENT teams up with the Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA) of the American Institute of Architects NY Chapter (AIANY) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) to host a competition to design and construct an architectural pavilion on Governors Island, the City of Dreams Pavilion.

As part of this year's FIGMENT summer-long program, the Governors Cup stands along with four interactive sculptures, a treehouse, and a minigolf course. The FIGMENT NYC Summer-Long Program will be free and open to the public while the island is open through September 21st.

FIGMENT kicks off each summer-long program and unveils the current City of Dreams Pavilion during FIGMENT NYC Weekend -- two days of exploration, play, dance, paint, and inspiration. Artists fill Governors Island with art of every imaginable style and medium. FIGMENT’s collaborative projects explored historical, current, and environmental issues while showcasing New York City’s diverse community. Check out pictures from this past June in TimeOut and Gothamist. This year, nearly 30,000 people came out to the island for the event.

Each year's City of Dreams Pavilion is 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. FIGMENT asks applicants to imagine a future New York City where anything is possible, creating 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 pavilion should employ recycled or recyclable materials, be constructed off site, and will be transported by water taxi to the island.

Entries are encouraged from individuals or teams of architects and non-architects of any age or experience level, provided they are prepared to design and construct the project. CDR Studio shared their process of planning, constructing, and assembling the Governors Cup on their Kickstarter page. They’re using this as an opportunity to educate visitors on how the 100 billion disposable cups Americans use each year could be reduced, reused, and recycled. Visit the HuffPost to learn what was involved in constructing the 2013 Head in the Clouds pavilion.

The deadline to register is August 20th, 2014 and all proposals must be submitted by September 30th. Finalists will be notified by October 15th. The winner will be selected by a jury of leading architects and other industry professionals in November 2014. Pending appropriate permit approvals, the pavilion will be installed in June 2015.

Head in the Clouds Pavilion by StudioKCA, image (c) 2013 by Tes Rivera

The 2015 pavilion will be our fifth City of Dreams Pavilion. In 2010 the Living Pavilion was designed by Ann Ha, Assoc. AIA, and Behrang Behin, Assoc. AIA; In 2011 Bittertang designed Burble Bup; In 2013 Head in the Clouds by StudioKCA won a Best of Year award from Interior Design Magazine in the installation category.

Living Pavilion by Ann Ha and Behrang Behin. Image (c) 2010 SpatialK

Since Governors Island first opened to the public in 2004, the attention and interest that this new public place has received has increased exponentially. In 2013, nearly 400,000 people visited the island through its summer season to engage in a variety of arts and cultural programs, as well as to enjoy summertime activities like picnicking and bike riding on the island.

Visitors to the island can bring their own bikes aboard on the ferry or rent bikes on the island. Food vendors will be there to serve FIGMENT visitors, but packing your own picnic basket is also encouraged. Visitors taking the 10 am and 11 am ferries from Manhattan and the 11 am and 11:30 am ferries from Brooklyn ride free. Adults can purchase $2 round-trip tickets online or at the dock for afternoon ferries. Children under 12 ride the ferry for free at all times. More information on getting to Governors Island is available on the Governors Island website.

Learn about the proposal criteria and to register for the City of Dreams competition

• Registration deadline: September 20, 2014
• Submissions due: September 30, 2014
• Construction: Spring 2015