Art & Architecture Festival | 2025
September 10-14, 2025
Peace Rises
BuildFest 2 asks candidates to submit designs for timber “Peace-Infrastructure,” which will be installed at various locations on the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock festival located at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.
Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival 2025: Build Fest 2, Peace Rises invites university faculty in design or a related field to propose ideas for interactive wooden art installations to be built on the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. Over the course of a five-day live-work festival, accepted participants will collaborate with self-organized teams to build, install, and work through on-site design solutions.
THEME
Fire, humanity’s first technology, was delivered to us by Prometheus, stolen from the gods and given as both a gift and a burden. This act bestowed upon us the power to create (to cook food and to keep warm) but also the potential for destruction (to burn down, and destroy). From that mythic moment, we’ve been tasked with the responsibility to wield this power with care. Today, as we stand on the threshold of new technological revolutions—artificial intelligence, autonomous construction, and beyond—we face a similar dilemma. While these innovations promise efficiency and progress they also bear with them enormous responsibility. What are the consequences of these tools? Can they, like fire, be used to nurture community, enrich craft, and sustain our planet? Or, rather, will they hasten our demise. Build Fest 2: Peace Rises looks to explore how emerging technologies can be embraced convivially, in service to human connection and ecological balance. It is an opportunity to question and reimagine a future where technology, like Prometheus’ fire, can be wielded for the collective good—mindful of both its power to spread peace and its potential to harm.
Submission Deadline: April 21
Submission Format: Single PDF (max 20MB) to BuildFest@bethelwoodscenter.org with the subject line “Peace Rising”
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