Fes­ti­val Struc­tures out of Recy­cled Mate­r­i­al

The Left Over Project – chill zone pavil­lions for the Var­jo Fes­ti­val made from recy­cled mate­r­i­al col­lect­ed from near­by areas

Struc­tures built out of recy­cled mate­ri­als are an effi­cient way to reduce car­bon emis­sions of fes­ti­vals and offer com­forts for atten­dees. The Left Over Project tri­al helped the Var­jo Fes­ti­val orga­niz­ers to reduce the costs of fes­ti­val struc­tures as well as their envi­ron­men­tal impact.

Inno­va­tion Tri­al

The Var­jo Fes­ti­val orga­niz­ers want­ed to offer new chill­out spaces for the atten­dees in the fes­ti­val area. The Left Over Project tri­al pro­duced two pavil­lions that were made out of waste mate­r­i­al acquired from local asso­ci­a­tions and com­pa­nies.

All ways of car­bon emis­sion reduc­tion were con­sid­ered in the design and con­struc­tion of the pavil­lions. For exam­ple, we tried to min­i­mize trans­port and elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion as well as to improve care­ful resource con­trol with local con­trac­tors. The goal was tuo build the pavil­lions at at least 50/50 ratio of recy­cled and new mate­r­i­al and to acquire the mate­ri­als with­in a 3 km radius from the fes­ti­val area.

Results

75 % of the mate­ri­als used in the pavil­lons was recy­cled and acquired from, for exam­ple, the recy­cling cen­tre, con­struc­tion sites and con­trac­tor ware­hous­es. Only struc­tur­al wood­parts, met­al rein­force­ments and screws were acquired as new.

By using recy­cled mate­r­i­al, 437,48 CO2xkg of emis­sions were avoid­ed. Trans­porta­tion car­bon emis­sions were min­i­mal as the struc­tures were only moved 1,2 km. If sim­i­lar pavil­lions were built out of new mate­ri­als, such as wood, the impact would be small but neg­a­tive nev­er­the­less. A mod­el built out of met­al and tex­tile mate­ri­als would have had a sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er impact.

The atten­dees also embraced the pavil­lions! They were wel­come chill­ing spots at the blaz­ing hot Var­jo Fes­ti­val where one could hide from the scorch­ing sun.

The struc­ture was designed to be mod­u­lar and easy to install so that the pavil­lions would be easy to move if need­ed. Con­sid­er­ing recy­cled mate­r­i­al use dur­ing the design­ing eas­es the alter­ing of ele­ments because their shape can be changed with­out touch­ing the pavil­lions over­all shape. After the fes­ti­val, the pavil­lions were moved to Pik­isaari extend­ing the life cycle of the mate­ri­als even fur­ther. After many late sum­mer vol­un­teer work days the struc­tures found new life as pub­lic saunas in Hailu­o­to Brewery’s Mallassauna’s back yard in Pik­isaari.

Briefly

• The tri­al was orga­nized by archi­tect Valenti­no Tig­nanel­li.
• The event was Var­jo Fes­ti­val held on June 16–17, 2023, in Kuu­sisaari, Oulu.
• The main goal of The Left Over Project was to mul­ti­ply the life cycle of mate­r­i­al with design: the pavil­lions, 75 % of which were con­struct­ed with recy­cled mate­r­i­al, were designed for fes­ti­val use but they are eas­i­ly trans­fer­able to dif­fer­ent events and dif­fer­ent uses.