Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival 2025 - BuildFest 2: Peace Rises

Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival 2025: Build Fest 2 – Peace Rises will bring together faculty and student teams from universities across the United States to construct interactive wooden art installations on the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock festival. Over the course of five days, participants will live and work on-site—where legendary performances by Jimi Hendrix and Joan Baez once took place—spending their days fabricating, assembling, and installing large-scale works, and their evenings immersed in cultural programming, including concerts, exhibitions, and pop-up events.

Students interested in participating should contact [email protected].

Ten projects of varying scales have been selected for construction through a national call for proposals, including two Peace Pavilions (large-scale), three Peace Hubs (medium-scale), and five Peace Pop-ups (small-scale), including a robotically fabricated cabin by Princeton University, a canopy constructed from reclaimed timber and recycled plastics by Rice University, and a reconfigurable modular timber monolith by Cornell University. Together, these projects demonstrate how human creativity—paired with innovations in timber construction—can give rise to architectures of peace: structures that are inventive, grounded, and socially resonant, and that carry forward the legacy of Woodstock as both a cultural landmark and a living laboratory for peace-building in the twenty-first century.

In parallel with the educational components of the festival, a series of free public events will take place:

Friday, September 12 (8:00 PM–12:00 AM): Headlining performance by experimental pop-rock group Guerilla Toss

Saturday, September 13 (8:00 PM–12:00 AM): BuildFest Closing Party

Sunday, September 14 (11:00 AM–4:00 PM): Public Opening of Installations

On-site camping is available upon request.

Venue: Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, located at the historic site of the 1969 Woodstock festival

Cost: Free event

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buildingfestival/

Website: https://www.bethelwoodscenter.org/museum/art-architecture-festival-2025

Promo Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sScu2V46qyA

Contact Email: [email protected]