My friend Monica and I entered a design competition to build one hole in a putt-putt course at the experimental station in Chicago. The guidelines were that you had to build your hole out of reused materials and also have a life for those materials after the course.
Our proposal is following:
Proposal for the First Annual Experimental Putt-Putt Green Design Competition

As a team of two we are qualified to build a mini-golf course because both of us are enthusiastic sculptors who are always looking for a challenge. We are essentially toy-makers with an interest in human interaction and public space, constantly conceptualizing what meaning we can give to an object or material and what fun thing we can make. As collectors and recyclers, we are consciously aware of the materials we use, always being as resourceful as possible and reusing materials that would otherwise be wasted. With strong, innovative building skills, we both use our intuition to create tools of play including human size instruments, climbable drinking fountains, pinball-like tracks through museums, and tricycle trains. This challenge to design a mini-gold course is an exceptional opportunity for us to test our skills as sculptors and see how innovative we really are. It would be an incredible learning opportunity for both of us and would enhance our graduate educations as sculpture MFA students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Our vision for a mini-golf course includes the use of the leftover stock of Kippenberger astro-turf, discarded bike inner-tubes, shipping pallets, household plumbing appliances, and salvaged pipes of any shape and size, keeping in mind that this list will probably be added to and can be adapted to what materials are available, what the space is like, and where our intuition takes us. Shipping pallets would create slopes and great obstacles by keeping them in their original form or taking out slats and refiguring the wood. The rubber from bike inter-tubes could create a surface that could slow a ball down or be blown up and become a circular obstacle for a golf ball to roll through. Household appliances like sinks, toilets, and water fountains would make for great golf holes and could be piped to make separate passages for different balls. The combination of these materials could make a very exciting and challenging mini-golf course. As far as a life for these materials after the golf-course, the opportunities are endless but here are some examples of what can be made: Out of practice, we know that bike inner-tubes can be used as material for wallets and books or simply cut into rubber-bands. The astroturf can be combined with the rubber and wood to make scrub brushes or can be a sponge or potholder on its own. The pallets and pipes can be combined to make furniture or the pipes could be cut into flower vases. And, lastly, the household appliances can be re-piped and used again for their original function.
Monica Herrera, Heather Mullins