www.bittertang.com:
Burble Bup is the earthen and inflatable answer to the second annual FIGMENT/ENYA/SEAoNY City of Dreams Pavilion Competition. Built of tactile materials the pavilion is a place of touch, interaction, play, and humorous social engagement. Thin membranes hold air and wood chips in bizarre and colorful volumes, attracting people to play underneath its dangling canopy and engage with their environment and neighbors in strange and interesting new ways. Designed to be played with, Burble Bup comes alive when filled with people hugging, punching, and petting it. This is encouraged throughout the summer with spontaneous and organized performances occurring in and around the pavilion, exciting the soft and supple structure.
Unlike most pavilions, the soil berms produce a private interior with whorls of smaller spaces knotted around its periphery. These soil mounds, constructed of soil and bark-filled fabric tubes, provide sitting and climbing surfaces. The exterior gradually mounds up in a series of grassy benches rising to form a visual and acoustical boundary for the pavilion’s interior where public performances, as well as private small talk, can be enjoyed.
Erected in the courtyard of Liggett Hall during Governors Island’s summer festivities, Burble Bup is a pavilion of two parts. The first, a dome, is made from individual custom-designed components (Bups) with a unique morphology that allows them to be connected together in a variety of ways. Their articulated, bloated and textured limbs provide a sticky connection to join neighboring Bups. The other portion of the pavilion is a landscape zone that gently rises to provide privacy and structural support for the dome.