Cast & Place has been announced the winner of the 2017 City of Dreams Pavilion Competition. Team Aesop has accepted the recognition with honor during the event held for celebrating the seventh annual competition this year.
The team consists of Josh Draper from PrePost/RPI-CASE, Powell Draper and Lisa Ramsburg from Schlaich Bergermann Partner, Max Dowd from the Cooper Union, and Edward M. Segal from Hofstra Universty. The jury members sifted through more than 100 designs before they announced the winner. The 2017 City of Dreams Pavilion winning proposal is expected to commence publicly this summer.
Cast & Place is now experimenting with its architectural strategies that focus on utilizing recycled materials. The style of materiality and fabrication of the winner of the 2017 City of Dreams Pavilion competition is unique and constructive. The winner will assemble around 300,000 aluminum cans and melt it down to cast it into cracked clay.
Kickstarter mentioned that the number of cans specified for the Cast & Place project is based on the frequency of cans used in New York City per hour. The pavilion, according to reports, will comprise two shade structures to be constructed from the aluminum panels cast into the clay. In addition, reflecting pools made from the clay will surround the pavilion.
"Soil dredged from the East River, the material also used in the construction of Governors Island, is laid out to dry and crack. 250,000 aluminum cans are melted down and poured into the cracked dredge. The results are light, strong panels that provide structure and shade, assembled into spaces for performance and play," the Cast & Place winning submission stated.
The pools will first reportedly be soaked in the summer rainfall and then allowed to dry. They will then be left to crack in heat. The audiences, in this way, will be opened to the fabrication method used for the aluminum panels, according to Arch Paper.
Art non-profit FIGMENT in collaboration with the AIANY Emerging New York Architects, and Structural Engineers Association of New York holds the City of Dreams Pavilion competition every year. The competition aims at promoting "sustainability-oriented thinking." It asks architects to propose designs, thereby focusing on the environmental as well as economic impacts of the same simultaneously.
