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Design of mini-golf hole wins award for UB architect
By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor
“City of Dreams Mini-Golf,” a nine-hole mini-golf course and participatory installation was installed last month on Manhattan’s Governors Island as one of several projects of FIGMENT 2008, a free, nonprofit, volunteer-planned, public participatory art event that takes place on the island every year.
Joyce Hwang’s “Intensified Reflections” is one of the “holes” that make up “City of Dreams Mini-Golf,” a nine-hole mini-golf course and participatory installation on Manhattan’s Governors Island.
Each of the mini-golf holes was conceived, constructed and installed by a different artist or group of artists selected through a competitive process, and each design was a variation on the theme “City of Dreams.” The results are most unusual, entertaining, visually complex and arresting.
One of the winning artists is Joyce Hwang, assistant professor of architecture in the UB School of Architecture and Planning.
Her design, “Intensified Reflections,” employs luminous reflections, colors and different surface types to create a unique visual experience for the mini-golf participant.
“It’s one in which the game, the construct and the site are seen through a series of mirrored surfaces,” Hwang says. “The idea of the project was to reflect ‘reality’ to such an extent that the reflections actually create a distortion of reality.”
The project was developed and fabricated primarily in the School of Architecture and Planning Material and Methods Shop, and involved the collaborative effort of undergraduate students Dave Nardozzi, John Scherer, Mike Pudlewski, Nicole Marple and Laura Schmitz.
FIGMENT 2008 was made possible by support from New York City’s Arts Action League, The Pure Project and the Black Rock Arts Foundation. The golf course, which will be open to the public until Sept. 5, is free of charge.