Can technology be used for the collective good? This fundamental question guided the 2025 Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival, known as BuildFest 2: Peace Rises, as it challenged timber pavilion design teams to explore new possibilities. More than 150 students and faculty members from ten schools across the United States recently spent four days experimenting with emerging construction technologies on the historic grounds where the 1969 Woodstock festival took place.
The building festival, now in its fourth year, ran from September 10-14 in Bethel, New York. Adding to previous installations scattered throughout the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts grounds, this year's projects specifically examined both the potential benefits and drawbacks of digital and robot-assisted construction methods. Festival curator Neal Lucas Hitch described the event as an attempt to see how emerging technologies might be embraced "convivially," supporting faculty over several months as they guided students through every phase from design and planning to fabrication and final installation.
Several teams embraced robotic fabrication to expand their prefabrication capabilities. Cornell University's Polylith team, led by Lawson Spenser and Ekin Erar along with students including Varun Gandhi, Jacob Gibbons, Seh Eun Emily Hong, Austin Johnson, and others, used pre-cut wood joinery with robotic arms for their polyhedral modular assemblage. Through his elective course "Rethinking Timber Joinery," Spenser explored whether there are genuine benefits to using robotic arms for joinery work. The robots handled the challenging mitered cuts, while students quickly assembled the flat-pack modules on site in what they called "construction labor as a collective act."
Princeton University's Adel Research Group, led by Dr. Arash Adel with researchers including Dr. Salma Mozaffari, Daniel Ruan, and Jutang Gao, took a particularly thoughtful approach to the relationship between human and machine labor. The team was "hyper-conscious towards labor and the role of humans in their construction," fabricating template wooden panels with robotic-arm precision before the festival, then reproducing them by hand on site to test against the machine-made versions. Adel noted his lab's interest in removing what he calls the "3Ds" – dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks – from construction work.
Other teams interpreted the concept of digital collaboration in more playful ways. Representing Kean University, Stephanie Sang Delgado and Galo Canizares from office ca, working with Fabio Castellanos, created an interactive billboard featuring more than 350 painted wooden pixels. Part oversized fidget spinner and part communal assembly, the work's pixelated design was intended to engage Kean's student community with what they called a "low-intensity, highly social experience." Canizares described their approach as "bringing people into a digital conversation but through low-fi processes," while Sang Delgado emphasized how introducing design-build projects to Kean's young design school, Michael Graves College, demonstrated the value of small, student-centered projects working with modest budgets.
Rice University's Chris Humphrey and Andrew Colopy used the festival as an opportunity to test both student interest in design-build projects and their university's new fabrication facilities. Despite more than fifty students volunteering to participate, only eight seniors were ultimately selected for the project. Their "armature for waste," constructed from offcuts and plastic by-products with angled joinery that referenced traditional agrarian architecture, was processed mostly by hand. "Oftentimes there are equally efficient traditional ways of working," Humphrey observed, highlighting the ongoing debate about when high-tech solutions truly offer advantages over conventional methods.
Several teams explicitly chose to treat advanced technology as just another tool rather than the primary focus. At Rochester Institute of Technology, art and design faculty Joe Allgeier, Fabiano Sarra, and Kelly Wilton took this approach with their project. Wilton explained that their project "rejects the push for technology by prioritizing the time and space we have here." Students designed collectively over just three quick meetings, then adapted their plans on site as needed. "We were the robots!" Sarra joked after completing their rapid installation process.
Marywood University faculty Kim Hagan and Michelle Pannone led students in constructing portal twisted frames from standard stud walls, rotating and reconfiguring these familiar construction elements to transform spatial perceptions. Meanwhile, RIT's Amanda Reis and the University of Manitoba's Eduardo Aquino from AREA reflected on "how much currency high technology has in academia," noting that projects often prioritize form over "the experience of the space, the body, light, materiality, etcetera." Their cedar pavilion, built from uncut lumber assembled into prefabricated panels, offered what they described as a meditative focus on site responsiveness and construction as a communal act.
Several smaller "Peace Pop-ups" also contributed to the festival's exploration of collaborative building. Benjamin Vanmuysen from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute created a bench overlooking the hills by stacking standard 2x4 lumber, deliberately leaving price tags and ratchet straps exposed. While he called it "lazy detailing," the layering was actually meticulously considered. A UCLA team mentored by Kutan Ayata built two hearth-inspired structures reflecting on the recent Los Angeles fires. With no prefabrication possible due to their geographic distance from the festival site, students Amber Grovet, Alexandra Ferreira, Brandt Rentel, Cameron Kursel, Hunter Blackwell, and Nathan Logan fabricated entirely on site, adapting resourcefully under significant time constraints.
One of the most innovative approaches came from Auburn University's Cait McCarthy and Jordan Young from office office, who tested how digital technology could become truly portable for construction sites. Using a custom CNC machine, they inscribed cut lines, drill points, and alignment marks directly onto lumber pieces. By making construction and assembly information visible on the materials themselves, they explained, fabrication could become more accessible to non-experts. Their prototype, assembled with help from Carnegie Mellon University students, came together in just a few hours, demonstrating the potential for this hybrid approach.
Like many pedagogical design-build experiments, BuildFest serves the dual purpose of supporting young faculty members while providing students with formative experiences that extend far beyond traditional classroom learning. Despite the inevitable glossy photographs of finished installations that document such events, the festival's spirit wholeheartedly embraced process over final product. Throughout the four-day event, collective knowledge emerged through trial and error, shared meals, and collaborative group labor that brought together participants from across the country.
Perhaps influenced by all the music, tie-dye, and peace signs that connected the festival to its Woodstock heritage, the event ultimately demonstrated that building together – whether with robots or traditional tools – is itself an inherently convivial act. The installations opened to the public on September 14 and will remain on display throughout the year, offering visitors a chance to experience these experiments in collaborative construction firsthand. Additional information about the individual projects and visiting opportunities can be found on the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts website.
