Initially designed as a striking pavilion for people to explore and enjoy as part of Mexico City’s Mextrópoli City Architecture Festival, One Bucket at a Time was inspired by the prevalent use of buckets to hijack public parking space in Mexico City’s unique yet contentious urban environment.
Received with great enthusiasm by visitors, these strong local origins of the bucket were reinterpreted by the collaborative, international design team in the installation’s second iteration at the historical Forks site in Winnipeg, Canada. Formally, its shape is composed of the same basic components, strategies, and techniques that were utilized in the design and construction of the first version. However, its elements adjusted to produce a form that was responsive to its Winnipeg context.
Designed and constructed by a tripartite team of international members, the installation uses 2500 five-gallon common painter’s buckets as the building blocks for an interactive pavilion. Nesting three buckets together in a tight triangular geometry allowed for a flexible form when connected by a grid of ropes and multiplied. Connected via a grid of ropes, the buckets form a malleable ‘surface’ that the public is encouraged to freely explore. The anchored surface functions like a giant carpet, and can be rolled or pulled together, to a point or along a line, in order to take on different forms. People can sit, run, play, stand, lounge, and participate in the act of taking over the public realm.
With community in mind, the new design aimed to double its impact, inviting visitors to “fill the wave” of buckets through individual donations. Each bucket used to construct the project left for Mexico filled with Canadian generosity, with proceeds given to Ayuda y Solidaridad con las Niñas de la Calle, a Mexican orphanage for at-risk girls and young women located in Mexico City.
