Holland Harvey submitted the following entry to construct a summer pavilion for the Figment art project in New York City. The brief called for a space to hold talks, exhibitions and events in a small park on Governor’s Island. The construction of the pavilion was to be from 100% recycled/recyclable materials and completely de-mountable: no trace was to be left after its dis-assembly and the pavilion was to convey an environmental message.
New York City skyline is composed of hundreds of buildings, illuminated by thousands of flourescent lamps. Each year an estimated 600 million of these lamps are disposed of in U.S. landfills: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that this amounts to approximately 140 tonnes of mercury being emitted into the environment by incinerators nationwide. As an indication of the effect of this pollution, the mercury from one fluorescent bulb can pollute 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe levels for drinking.
En.light.en proposes working in collaboration with a commercial waste management organisations to divert 9,000 spent fluorescent tubes from collection points around New York City to Governor’s Island for the construction of the Figment summer pavilion. The lamps will be suspended from a temporary scaffold structure using recyclable nylon clips to enclose the space. Once the installation is dismantled, the scaffold can be disassembled and the fluorescent tubes transported to a recycling plant in New Jersey for processing. The materials (metal, glass and mercury) can then be refined and reused in numerous industrial applications. The pavilion will cease to exist.
The pavilion’s design exploits the confluence of visitors over the summer period to promote a renewed awareness of the systems and processes that contribute to our urban existence and their potentially detrimental effect on our environment. The project utilises urban detritus to create an ethereal and dynamic meeting place for discussion, education and enjoyment. Implicitly, En.Lighten proposes an optimistic future city where innovation supplants inefficiency and waste is perceived as an opportunity rather than an inevitability amongst designers.
