FIGMENT, one of Governors Island's key cultural partners, has joined forces with The Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA) of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) to sponsor a competition to design and construct an architectural pavilion for the 2010 summer season on Governors Island, the City of Dreams Pavilion. The registration deadline is February 8, and the deadline for entries is February 16.

Since Governors Island first opened to the public in 2004, the attention and interest that this new public place has received has increased exponentially. In 2009, more than 275,000 people visited the island through its summer season (late May to mid October) to engage in a variety of arts and cultural programs, as well as to enjoy summertime activities like picnicking and bike riding on the island.

The City of Dreams Pavilion will be a gathering place for people to meet, learn about the arts programs on the island, be able to enjoy a planned or impromptu performance or lecture, and experience the interaction of art and the historic context of Governors Island.

Our theme for the pavilion, the City of Dreams, points toward the future. The current state of the world is such that both the economy and natural resources are limited in ways we have never experienced in our lifetimes. Inevitably, the result will be a change in harmful habits that have driven the world to its current state. One place to start to activate and energize these changes in within the architecture and design community, where the movement toward sustainable design has only scratched the surface of what is possible and necessary.

Instead of a typical design competition, the City of Dreams Pavilion asks entrants to consider how they will construct this temporary structure in the most efficient and sustainable way possible. Entrants will consider the entire lifecycle of building materials in their submission, from pre-construction through disassembly.

In the end, the goals is to create a pavilion that has net zero impact and that serves as a prototype for a new, truly sustainable, way of thinking about design and construction.