by: Jessica Sheridan Assoc. AIA LEED AP
Seventy volunteers (some in the photo on the left) came out to help build the Living Pavilion (right) on Governors Island.
Jessica Sheridan
About a year ago, the AIANY Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA) started planning a pavilion competition for Governors Island with participatory arts organization FIGMENT and the Structural Engineering Association of New York (SEAoNY). As the committee co-chair, I saw the project start and stall a couple of times before it gained momentum and ultimately grew into the Living Pavilion. Now that the “Building the Living Pavilion” exhibition is on view at the Center for Architecture, and I have had the chance to look back, I realize how valuable the project is, not only for ENYA, but also for the designers, the volunteers who helped build the project, and the emerging architecture community as a whole.
Ann Ha, Assoc. AIA, and Behrang Behin, Assoc. AIA, conceived of the Living Pavilion as a vaulted structure with an inverted green wall made from milk crates and liriope plants. Two years out of graduate school, this is their first built collaboration. The project took approximately two months to construct. That says nothing of the endless hours of designing and redesigning to fit within a tight budget, an unplanned relocation due to the lack of water at the original site, and heroic coordination with the island and ferry schedules by Pavilion Foreperson Daniela Morell (among her many other responsibilities). Then there were the 70 volunteers who helped build the pavilion. Often we talked about how this pavilion probably “employed” more emerging designers than any other architecture firm this summer!
When selecting a winning entry, the jury discussed the project as something that could rival the MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program. Similar to the YAP, the success of the competition goes beyond the winning entry. Finalist EASTON+COMBS won the highest honor in this year’s AIANY New Practices New York competition. NAMELESS ARCHITECTURE, another finalist, received a BSA/AIA Unbuilt Architecture Award for its entry into this competition.
Please stop by the Center for Architecture to see the exhibition that celebrates the design process and all who contributed to the many phases of the competition. Then, if you haven’t already, take the free five-minute ferry ride one weekend to Governors Island before October to experience it in person and congratulate the designers (who will probably be out there watering their plants!).