Living Pavilion Dispatch #2: The Big Move from NJ to GI

Our crew on site: Moishe Friedman, Rusty Mooooooo, 

MaryBeth Burton, Chris Cummings, co-architect Behrang Behin, and 

Tom Klaber (not shown is Jook Leung who helped us earlier on the NJ leg)

more photos here

Today was a triumph. Up until now, 460 milk crates and 2500 potted loriape plants have been sitting in the backyard of the architect's very patient parents in northern New Jersey. Now they are finally home at the field behind Liggett Hall, where they apparently mark the first building materials to show up on site in the City of Dreams.

It was an adventure and we covered a lot of ground. For half of us, the day started off with trials of truck rental in Brooklyn (as a pedestrian city dweller, somehow I only find myself behind the wheel if a 20+ foot truck is involved), for the other half it was meeting up with strangers at a bus depot in the northern reaches of Manhattan. By the time my group got to NJ, everyone else had already gotten materials organized and ready to be loaded. Despite the fact that there are an enormous amount of pieces, identical cube shaped milk crates are the easiest thing I think any of us have ever had to load onto a truck.

Then off to Governors Island. All the while during the many legs of this trip we were unsure exactly where we'd be able to find water for the plants, as the spiggot we expected turned out to have been turned off without anyone noticing or remembering this past winter. Hence our enormous happiness at being allowed to tap into the fire hydrant, at least temporarily. A long term solution is still in the works. It's made us all think a lot about water scarcity, harvesting, and conservation. You cannot take for granted that your island will have water, and in fact the water that is on Governors Island is non-potable.

I especially want to thank the crew today for accomplishing such a major leg of this trip. We're finally starting to see the community come together in action to build this thing, which is necessary for Figment to flourish. We had representatives from Figment, the Emerging New York Architects, Burning Man, and the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology at RPI, some of whom are friends of mine and some I met for the first time today.

If anyone would like to come help next week, please sign up at www.tinyurl.com/pavilionvolunteer.