painting by Deirdre Towers

Deirdre Towers has created with Mara Aceves, Mexican born, Paris-based interior designer,  a pavilion inspired by spirals to be used as a public sanctuary. We’d like this project to be a Swiss Army knife of projects, many things to many people in different circumstances, at different times of the day.

While searching for the perfect black box to film a solo a few years ago, I began to dream of expanding the size of a photo booth, to accommodate 1-2 people for a video shoot, adding a control box for camera angles, lights, sounds, smells. As stress levels rose in 2025, I felt a need to support the people most impacted, and do something more than march in a parade.  And so, the black box morphed into a public sanctuary. Our focus shifted from a place to a film to a place to relax, to simply be.

We began asking ourselves, “What could be most effective in a short amount of time?” What could top popping an aspirin or Xanax? My rebel heart longs to offer an alternative to prescription drugs! By opening the ceiling of our pavilion, the entrant will look up – a neck-saver for all of us doom-scrollers  – gaze into the light, and breathe.  Read more about the “science of pausing” in Psychology Today

To create a symbol of growth and change, we keep returning to spirals, natural materials, and indigenous architecture. We hope to build this structure with the kind of waste wood and fungi that make wood glow in the dark. “Researchers in Switzerland have figured out how to make wood glow in the dark—without wires, batteries, or synthetic chemicals. By carefully combining the white rot fungus Desarmillaria tabescens with blocks of balsa wood, scientists from Empa created a hybrid material that produces visible bioluminescence for hours at a time.” A little wink to the naysayers to climate change

Our pavilion is covered with ropes and vines. The dance floor is designed as a drum so that the entrants could dance and make their hearts felt.

This summer, we will put on a swimming raft, so performers could perform on rivers, ponds, and creeks.

We plan to program a 24 hour schedule, interweaving participants from the man/woman/child off the street to solo/duo artists; record, and edit it, offer it as a subscription service, so that it becomes a self-perpetuating, self-sustaining project.

Giving everyone a reprieve, a clean, safe place to be  alone, scream, sing, dance or sleep, or pray is an investment in peace.

That gives me pause…this gives me hope.

https://www.instagram.com/nicokpoesie/

Emboldened – in part – by the dancers who did a 90 second dance in front of the Kennedy Center, First Amendment Troupe.

Sponsorship/collaboration opportunities for this international effort to invest in peace, play, and prayer.