Chameleon is a simple steel grid that provides permanent infrastructure for temporary pavilions or installations. The largest portion of resources in any temporary pavilion goes towards structural concerns: supporting a canopy, lateral resistance, overturning, the like. Eliminating these concerns allows each future pavilion, canopy, or artwork the opportunity to become simpler, scalable, more cost effective, and exponentially more sustainable.
Made up of 12 bays, each measuring 30’ x 30’ x 30’, the structure is large enough to sustain many activities and be monumental, yet delicate enough to disappear when not in use. The infrastructure gives designers an existing condition to work with or against, allowing a wide range of activities to happen in, on, and around it. For instance, as volleyball courts built within the structure; as an armature for stages, lighting and projections for concerts; as support for bleachers for nearby soccer matches; as an armature for a ropes courses or a trapeze, a frame for a movie screen, a canopy structure to house markets or fairs, a backup for handball, a frame for batting cages and golfing ranges, and beyond.
By providing an armature for many various activities, the space is able to attract new audiences while reducing the continually incurred costs of rotating pavilions. The capital costs can be divided among invested parties, who may purchase equivalent percentage rights to use the structure for a designated time period, spreading out the burden of programming between the invested parties.
As the structure is altered, reprogrammed, and modified, it becomes an icon for its grounds. Transformable, and radically different each time, visitors will be constantly engaged through new activities, on new scales.
Client: Figment NYC
Program: Cultural, Pavilion
Status: Complete
Size: 10,800 SF
Location: New York, NY
Team:
Architect: KM,A (Kyle May, Adam Feldman, Maria Moersen)
Images: KM,A