Recyclable Timber Pavilion Wildflowers Leads BuildFest 2026 at Woodstock Site

A recyclable timber pavilion that mimics wildflowers headlined BuildFest 2026, the fifth edition of the student building festival held from 9 to 13 September on the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York.

Students from Lehigh University and Syracuse University designed the installation, called Wildflowers. Custom-designed 3D-printed joints connect timber columns in an X shape that resembles flowers. The whole structure can be disassembled for future use.

The design makes reuse simple. The joints are fixed with hex bolts that leave three small holes in each piece, so components can be removed and reused without damaging the timber.

What is Acts of Construction?

BuildFest 2026 marks the first instalment of a three-year curatorial initiative titled Acts of Construction. The 2026 edition, called Act One: Staging, explored how structures can accommodate different uses, performances and configurations. Future editions will reuse and transform the same structures.

The event focused on large-scale structures designed to be adapted, dismantled and reused. It forms part of the Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival, bringing together students and faculty to design and build timber pavilions and multimedia installations.

Which universities built what?

Six projects anchor the 2026 edition:

• Wildflowers — Lehigh University & Syracuse University. Recyclable timber pavilion with 3D-printed joints. Project leads: Hannibal Newson, Christina Chi Zhang and Lauren Scott.
• Proscenium — University of Idaho. A timber truss framed a raised stage and suspended curtain among the trees, recalling the Grand Stage at Woodstock. It used stump and roundwood rejected by commercial timber milling alongside dimensional lumber. Lead: Robert Wightman.
• Contact Hi-Fi — Cornell University. Built from pallet wood diverted from waste streams, informed by prefabricated roof trusses. Its modular trusses rearrange into 12 configurations, with interchangeable panels featuring sonic transducers and sound-responsive lighting. Leads: Emma Silverblatt and Ryan Whitby.
• BaleWorks — Cornell University. Straw bales held within modular timber frames; the structure doubles as a composting porta-john, combining agricultural waste, construction and public infrastructure. Lead: Marta H. Wisniewska & Regenerative Architecture Lab.
• Flotilla — University of California, Los Angeles & University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A floating modular ramp on the festival's pond that assembles into a single structure, separates into individual rafts or rearranges into performance spaces.
• Flying Buttruss — Syracuse University & Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. An illuminated timber truss built with lumber, hardware and LED lights reused from last year's BuildFest, relocated from the camping ground and raised between the trees, accompanied by a bench made from leftover timber.

How were the installations used?

At night, several pavilions and installations hosted live performances and light shows, testing Act One's premise that staging structures should serve multiple uses.

The event ran over five days, though one caption describes it as a 3-day event on the Woodstock grounds. All installations remain open to the public through November in Bethel, New York.

With two further editions of Acts of Construction to come, the 2026 structures face their real test: whether the bolted joints, modular trusses and straw-bale frames designed for disassembly actually get rebuilt on this site in future years.