On Tuesday, New York–based nonprofit Figment announced the winner of the 2018 City of Dreams Pavilion Design Competition which will be built on Governors Island in New York. Selected from five finalist teams, the winning project is designed by a team made up of Ithaca, N.Y.–based Austin+Mergold; Maria Park, an associate professor at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; Christopher Earls, a professor at the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University; and Scott Hughes, a principal at the Robert Silman Associates Structural Engineers. Launched in May 2017, the competition brief asked for a sustainable design that will have minimum impact on the environment. The entrants were encouraged to reuse salvaged construction materials, work with manufacturers that produce cradle-to-cradle products, and seek sponsorship from socially and environmentally responsible organizations.
The winning project, dubbed "Oculi," features a series of elevated circular structures made of deconstructed metal grain bins, a structure that is widely found abandoned in the rural landscape of the northeastern United States. Each structure offers a wide oculus to the sky and each opening "tracks the path of the sun, producing a range of shadow patterns augmented by color and sound," according to a release. The interior walls will be painted to resemble the colors of the daytime sky.
Although the pavilion awaits funding, the design team is closely working with the competition organizers—Figment, the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter's Emerging New York Architects Committee, and the Structural Engineers Association of New York—to locate the installation site, obtain approvals and permits, and refine the design.
The pavilion will open to the public for the summer and, when the island closes at the end of the season, the bins will be reused to create an experimental housing project in the city titled House‐in‐a‐Can. According to the same release, the colors of the interior walls will be adjusted according to the New York's summer sky colors.
The 2018 jury comprised David Benjamin, founding principal of New York–based The Living; Anna Fixsen, senior web editor at Metropolis magazine; Benjamin Gilmartin, AIA, partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Anna Ha, partner at Jersey City, N.J.–based Behin-Ha Design Studio; Jorge Otero-Pailos, AIA, director and professor of historic preservation at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; and Brooklyn, N.Y.–based artist Risa Puno.
