Pavilion 100% recycled

Head in the Clouds is the most recent pavilion designed for “city of dreams art celebration” 2013, an event promoted by FIGMENT in association with Emerging New York Architect Committee (ENYA) of American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (AIANY), and Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY), and can be visited until 22 September on Governors Island, New York.

Exploring the concept of sustainability, this pavilion designed by the architects Jason Klimoski, AIA, and Lesley Chang from studioKCA is entirely built with recycled materials, reusing 53,780 plastic bottles and milk jugs - roughly the amount that is discarded in New York over 1 hour.

The structure of the pavilion is made with aluminium tubes using less material and easier to transport than the traditional materials such as wood. The bottles are used to create 120 "pillows" giving the pavilion its bumpy, organic cloud shape. The interior is lined with plastic bottles filled with water and organic food colouring, creating a colourful living space with various shades of blue, with a capacity for nearly 50 people.

Head in the Clouds offers visitors the chance to walk into the clouds, experiencing them from the inside out. Clouds are collections of water and movement that seem to form animals, people, and cities by dreamers gazing at the sky. With their ‘heads in the clouds’ sky gazers visualize fantastical shapes, ideas, and spaces. The City of Dreams Pavilion is a place dedicated to dreaming, and this year’s winning project exemplifies this ideal. This project creates a venue where visitors can lose themselves in both the cloud-like structure, as well as the clouds in the sky around them.

FIGMENT is a free participatory arts event held in multiple cities and attracting tens of thousands of participants each year. FIGMENT celebrates an abundance of creativity and passion, challenging artists and our communities to find new ways to create, share, think, and dream, with events in multiple cities in the US and Australia, and interactive exhibits on NYC’s Governors Island throughout the summer season. For more information on participating cities, visit www.figmentproject.org.