This year at Pickathon, Windmill returns as more than just a neighborhood—it’s an immersive experience and visionary collaboration. Designed in partnership with AfroVillage PDX, the 2025 Windmill Neighborhood invites festival-goers into a reimagined world that celebrates the vibrant culture, philosophy, and history of the African diaspora while envisioning a future grounded in connection, sustainability, and community care.
From the moment you arrive, Windmill transports you through space and time. Patterns of African Kente cloth and culturally significant symbols adorn the neighborhood’s entrance portals, ushering you into a world where the past, present, and future coexist. Throughout the neighborhood—at the bar, vendor booths, stage, and DJ area—you’ll see bright textures, repeated motifs, and Afrofuturistic twists that reflect a future deeply rooted in ancestral wisdom and intuitive connection to land.
This installation is not just about aesthetics. It’s a living story. One that centers the imagination, creativity, and resilience of Black communities across the globe. Working from our tangled past, Windmill brings forward a future where diversity and collaboration are essential for unity.
Our creative process embraces the use of reclaimed materials, continuing the Pickathon tradition of sustainable design. But Windmill takes this further—beyond sustainability into regeneration. These structures are built with purpose beyond the weekend. After Pickathon, the vendor booths will be transformed into a greenhouse installation for AfroVillage’s Oasis in Portland, supporting food security, education, and healing spaces for underserved and marginalized communities.
This act of transformation speaks to a larger philosophy: that what we build together should live on, uplift others, and serve a purpose beyond consumption.
2025 is the Year of the Salmon at Pickathon. Just like salmon swimming upstream with strength and resilience, the Windmill Neighborhood weaves in symbols of persistence and renewal. As you wander through the trees, reflective CD fish scales will guide your way to shady rest areas, where spacecraft-inspired seating pods offer a place to pause and look up into a spiraling Milky Way. It’s in these quiet, thoughtful details that Windmill fully becomes a place of wonder, inspiration, and community reflection.
Windmill is brought to life by a dream team of collaborators, including:
This diverse group brings together creative minds across architecture, art, and community work to build something truly unforgettable.
Follow the journey and learn more about the collaborators:
Windmill is more than a destination—it’s a celebration of culture, a statement of values, and a call to action. We can’t wait for you to experience it.