2013 BOY Winner: Installation

Firm: STUDIOKCA
Project: Head in the Clouds Installation
Location: Governors Island, New York
Photography: Chuck Choi

As New York Harbor’s newest tourist destination prepared to host the Figment arts festival, under Lady Liberty’s sidelong gaze, an AIA New York Chapter competition solicited plans for a temporary pavilion. Principals Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang won the opportunity to build their fanciful first-place entry, then went straight to Kickstarter for funding—and collected 100 percent. They also collected 53,780 used plastic bottles and jugs, approximately the number of empties the city discards in a single hour, for preassembly with help from 200 volunteers. When the sections were ready, they were ferried over from Manhattan via water taxi and attached with metal wire to an?aluminum armature 40 feet long. The jugs formed the outer surface of the cloud, while smaller bottles lined the inside. All of the latter contained liquid in shades of blue, a combination of water and food coloring.

Project Team:
Brian Chu; Jinwon Lee; Josette Matthew; Hector Orellana; Cory Zwerlein.