Bittertang has won the 2011 City of Dreams Pavilion Competition in New York City. Their entry, Burble Bup, will be constructed using an assemblage of tubular earthen walls and a canopy of aggregated, inflatable “Bups,” which will be erected in the courtyard of Liggett Hall for the summer festivities on Governors Island. Over a period of four months Burble Bup will act as the central gathering point for various art and cultural activities, while also housing an ongoing internal program of performance and interaction.
The intent of Burble Bup is to provide a tactile retreat for its users and will, in turn, include a sumptuous interior that encourages both leisure and interaction. Instead of simply encasing these functions, the pavilion will actively seek to both enhance and embody them.
From the designers: “Bittertang envisions strangers lounging and mingling comfortably within the tactile embrace of Burble Bup’s earthen walls. Enticed by its colorful inflatable canopy, people will be lured into its soft and magical interior, where they will rest, socializing among new friends and upon plush soil tubes.”
The materiality of the project was conceived with both recycling and reusability in mind. The soil berms that ground the project will be constructed of soil and bark filled tubing, which will weave and stack to produce both spaces that vary in size as well as surfaces for lying, sitting, climbing and playing. The fabric that will encase these tubes will later be composted, while the filler will be distributed throughout the island for other landscape projects. The non-toxic, inflatable canopy that provides both solar relief and constantly shifting colored light for the interior will be disassembled and the Bups will be repurposed as floating toys at various New York City pools.
This is the second year of the City of Dreams Pavilion Competition, which is organized and sponsored by FIGMENT and co-sponsored by The Emerging New York Architects Committee of AIANY and the Structural engineers Association of New York.
