2018 City of Dreams Pavilion on Governors Island Will Repurpose Grain Silos

Oculi. Image courtesy FIGMENT

Focusing on the importance of sustainable design, the annual City of Dreams Design Competition on Governors Island asks teams to create an architectural pavilion with consideration to the environmental impact of their work. In the past, winners have reused plastic cups, discarded hangers and aluminum cans. Hosted annually by FIGMENT and the Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA) of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (AIANY), the competition is now in its 8th year.

Image courtesy FIGMENT

This year’s winner is Austin+Mergold’s Oculi, a design that will repurpose disused grain silos from upstate New York. The interior of the silos will be painted with different shades of “New York sky blue,” which means that the installation interior will match the sky during certain times of the day.

“A product of the industrial age, when faith in technology-driven progress outstripped our considerations of what came after, the grain bin now exists as an artefact, underused and nearly abandoned,” the FIGMENT website writes.

The silos will also be elevated to create a range of shadow pattens that will be augmented by color and sound. Following their use for the project, they will then be reconstructed as an experimental housing cluster in central New York, a “House-in-a-Can.”

The Color Waves Pavilion. Image courtesy FIGMENT

Follicle. Image courtesy FIGMENT

This year’s finalists include the Color Waves Pavilion (Shujie Chen, Xiao Tong, Ning Wang, Yifeng Wang, Yifeng Wu, Bowen Zhang Assoc. AIA, Matthew Streeter, Jingwen Wang, and Sam Wilson), Follicle (Deborah Lopez, Hadin Charbel, Mika Portguaise, Francisco Prada López, and Anders Rod), the Rainbow Pavilion (Christophe Cormy Donat), Mossgrove (Sam Biroscak in collaboration with Gina Dyches, Stephanie Borchers, Annick Lang, and Anneli Rice). You can learn more about each proposal here.

Oculi, when installed, will be on view through the summer.

Mossgrove. Image courtesy FIGMENT