Tied Together

Hou de Sousa's proposal was selected as a finalist for the 2015 City of Dreams Competition.

Tied Together is a pavilion made out of aluminum pipes and strands of rope braided from 38,000 repurposed plastic bags (the amount New York City wastes every 90 seconds). The project acts as a venue for events and performances, serves as a shaded picnic area, and provides as an iconic meeting point for visitors to Governors Island. From a distance, Tied Together appears to be a solid sculptural object, but from up close, the overlapping composition of rope and linear gaps produces a moiré effect which visually shifts and alters the surrounding landscape as one moves between the pavilion’s spaces.

In researching New York City’s recycling program, we discovered that less than 1% of New York City’s plastic bags are recycled, even though they account for 22% of all the plastics sent to landfills. The NYS Plastic Bag Reduction, Reuse, and Recycling Act was passed in 2009 and requires medium to large scale retailers to accept plastic bags for recycling. Tied Together aimed to raise awareness for this law and increase its impact.

The annual City of Dreams competition is hosted by FIGMENT, the Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA) of the American Institute of Architects NY Chapter (AIANY) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY).