Foamspace

The biennial competition aims "to initiate the design of a unique temporary outdoor structure intended to facilitate new forms of collective public gathering while addressing the IDEAS CITY Festival’s theme: The Invisible City." Foamspace does this by taking something invisible – expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam, typically used as lightweigtht fill for highways, parking lots, embankments, stadium seating and foundations – and making it a visible. In fact, the geofoam blocks are the only material for the installation, and they will be put "to imaginative use by creating a landscape of structures to host select festival programming."

Beyond the physical installation, SecondMedia (a collaboration between Nikolay Marynov, Betty Fan, Ekaterina Zavyalova, and Ryan John King) is also creating "a virtual platform that will operate as a revenue paradigm for community members to propose, vote on, and fund projects in order to extend the Festival’s civic engagement beyond its temporal limits." The blocks will be sold at market price after the IDEAS CITY Festival, with the money turning into "Foamspace Coin" for the community to manage.

More information on the installation and its post-Festival virtual reality can be found at the Foamspace website.