INTRODUCING PAVILIONS:

BIG W
  ORLDS UNDER LITTLE T
  ENTS
Joel Robinson
What is a pavilion? In this issue of the Open Arts Journal we learn that this little-studied type of structure has assumed a
diversity of forms and functions, which beg the question of whether the pavilion should be seen as an architectural type at
all.This editorial introduction suggests that one way of conceptualizing the pavilion across time and space is as a transient
(and often modest) presence in the landscape, one which belies the otherwise rather weighty ideas or positions about the
world embodied or put on display there.This thesis is unfolded in various ways in the contributions to this themed issue,
which explore pavilions as spaces of display, ornamental eccentricities and experimental prototypes, as well as national
monuments of a heraldic or diplomatic kind.

Keywords: pavilion, architecture, exhibition, exposition, world’s fair, internationalism.

Joel Robinson, The Open University

Joel Robinson is a Research Affiliate in the Department of Art History at the Open University and an Associate
Lecturer for the Open University in the East of England. His main interests are modern and contemporary art,
architecture and landscape studies. He is the author of Life in Ruins: Architectural Culture and the Question of Death in
the Twentieth Century (2007), which stemmed from his doctoral work in art history at the University of Essex, and
he is co-editor of a new anthology in art history titled Art and Visual Culture: A Reader (2012). Additionally, he is a
freelance critic for various magazines of contemporary art, and Contributing Editor in London for Asian Art News
and World Sculpture News.

Introducing Pavilions: Big Worlds under Little Tents

(Joel Robinson, The Open University)
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2013w01jr

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INTRODUCING are being called the spaces of global cultures. Hence,

it is time that there were more scrutiny of what
PAVILIONS: BIG WORLDS they are, or what they have been in modern history.
UNDER LITTLE TENTS Considering the symbolic capital they afford those
individuals, organizations or nations that have them
constructed, but also the agency they offer those who
Joel Robinson,The Open University would seek to challenge consensual culture and raise
Abstract questions about the use of public space, pavilions might
What is a pavilion? In this issue of the Open Arts Journal we be recognised for what they are: architectural works
learn that this little-studied type of structure has assumed a that may appear trifling (especially next to grander
diversity of forms and functions, which beg the question of civic monuments), but which are more often than not
whether the pavilion should be seen as an architectural type embattled structures, bound up with claims to power,
at all.This editorial introduction suggests that one way of status and identity, and thus harbouring some rather big
conceptualizing the pavilion across time and space is as a ideals or ideas about the world.
transient (and often modest) presence in the landscape, one
which belies the otherwise rather weighty ideas or positions Toward a Genealogy of the Pavilion
about the world embodied or put on display there.This As a way of beginning, it might be helpful to try and
thesis is unfolded in various ways in the contributions to this visualise, for heuristic purposes, a simple genealogy of
themed issue, which explore pavilions as spaces of display, the pavilion, which would support the above hypothesis.
ornamental eccentricities and experimental prototypes, as Such a genealogy could be complicated later; this is
well as national monuments of a heraldic or diplomatic kind. certainly what the texts that follow this introduction
will do. Beginning with the earliest examples, one might
call to mind those portable foldaway structures, capable
It may have been possible in the not-too-distant past of being set up quickly in the encampments of military
to dismiss the pavilion (the ‘pavilloner,’ as Le Corbusier campaigns and diplomatic assemblies. In the ancient
disparagingly called it) as a minor and inconsequential Roman Empire and beyond, these acquired the name
type of architecture, a frivolous ornament on the ‘butterflies’ – papilio in Latin, from which the modern
landscape. Today, one might find it harder to ignore such French pavillon derives. This was possibly on account of
architectural spaces – whether they are built for official their fleeting appearance in the landscape, and the way
institutions and international expositions, or conceived that their canopies appeared to flap in the breeze. Such
by artists as more experimental structures that structures were undoubtedly utilitarian, but they were
intervene within a politics of cultural representation. also heraldic, stately and ornamental, in keeping with
Pavilions are now often front and centre to what their purpose. They continued to be used through the

Figure 0.1: William Kent, Temple of Ancient Virtue, 1734, Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire. Photograph: Joel Robinson.

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modern period, although the more purely functional

tents used in warfare today hardly compare.
Bringing the pavilion more squarely into the sphere
of art and culture were the much more festive tents
of medieval and renaissance pageantry. Here, different
forms and uses were found, to the extent that the
image of the pavilion now begins to divide and multiply.
As it enters palatial gardens, villa parks and country
estates (Figure 0.1), however, the pavilion is still very
much tied to power and wealth, as well as to land and
territorial claims. This is why, in spite of appearances,
it is never entirely uncoupled from its largely patrician
and martial associations. It enters the world of the
propertied classes with a less obvious pragmatic or
diplomatic purpose, more as an embellishment or
pleasant diversion.Yet, it is no less meaningful for
that. Never reducible to a frivolous addition, the
construction of a pavilion usually was (and perhaps
still is) motivated by self-aggrandisement, aesthetic
speculation, civilizing ritual or political strife of some
kind.
By the eighteenth century, parks and gardens
were beginning to host a broad range of structures
that might (at a stretch) be referred to as pavilions.
Europeans were now aware that garden pavilions
Figure 0.2: Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, Pavilion in the
actually had a much more ancient history outside Arab-Norman Style, English Gardens, 1850-51, Palermo.
Europe and Asia Minor, extending to the Far East. Photograph: Joel Robinson.
Having spent some time in Canton, the architect and
former employee of the Swedish East India Company
William Chambers enthused: ‘No nation ever equaled
the Chinese in the splendor and number of their
garden structures’ (Chambers, 1773, p. 35). Amidst
the classical revival, many pavilions now took on the
character of more permanent (or quasi-permanent)
fixtures in the landscape; some became so monumental,
rigid and austere that they lost the sprightliness
of butterflies altogether, and transmogrified into
something new, not infrequently resembling mausolea
more than flamboyant marquees.
Now associated with recreation and entertainment,
pavilions held various functions in the ‘modern’
English-style landscaped parks, and in the increasingly
eclectic, fanciful gardens of the Regency and Victorian
eras – as a glance at the pattern books of nineteenth-
century architects like John Buonarotti Papworth will
reveal. They served as lodges, boathouses, gazebos,
seats, pergolas, stages, bandstands, conservatories,
aviaries and cabinets. They were now built to resemble
rustic cottages, Grecian sanctuaries, Gothic follies,
or Orientalist exotica – e.g., Turkish kiosks, Moorish
fortresses, Indian temples, Chinese pagodas and later
Japanese teahouses (Figures 0.2-0.3). These last Figure 0.3: Japanese Pavilion, or Chokushi-Mon (Imperial
Envoy’s Gateway), 1910-11, Kew Gardens, London.
attested not only to the cosmopolitanism of the patron, Photograph: Joel Robinson.

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but also to imperial aspirations and fantasies of remote instrument for directing the movement and vision of
times or places. Following the building of the Royal much larger numbers of people inside. Of course, some
Pavilion at Brighton, the demand for an architecture garden pavilions of the past had served as spaces of
of leisure in the nineteenth century saw such pavilions display, boasting curiosities or sculptures, even living
taken to the seaside or adapted to the public park for things (e.g., glasshouses, menageries and zoos) on
the benefit of a much wider populace. their interiors. But the pavilion was now so closely
With modernity came the evolution of an entirely associated with the displays they contained that the
different species of pavilion. This was inseparable architectural container itself was often demoted to a
from a new culture of exhibition, of spectatorship theatrical set.
and spectacle – of the kind that turned all and sundry Conversely, there were pavilions that actually stole
into consumers. Its dominant form was the exposition attention away from the exhibits, becoming a lot more
space. Consider the Crystal Palace of 1851, effectively a memorable than whatever might have been displayed
monster pavilion sheltering smaller individual marquees, inside. If some world’s-fair buildings were attention-
each advertising the wares of a nation, whether that getting preambles for the exhibitions they contained,
was Britain, with its exoticised colonial possessions, others capitalised on the excuse of an exhibition and
or one of its continental competitors. From the late the great licence afforded by such temporary events to
nineteenth century onward, nations (colonisers and make bold architectural statements. The Soviet Pavilion
colonies alike) participating in such international at Paris’ 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et
expositions (or world’s fairs, as they came to be Techniques dans la Vie Moderne; the Roman Pavilions
called in North America) were represented by their at the 1927 and 1929 Tripoli Trade Fairs organised by
own pavilions, built in a wide array of styles intended Italy; or the Misulgwan Exhibition Building at the 1915
to reflect a certain image or identity. Thereafter, the Korean Products Competitive Exhibition organised by
architecture of the pavilion was mobilised in events Japan, were ironically more lasting precisely on account
that – as contemporary observers found – were ‘not of their ephemerality.
just exhibitions of the world, but the ordering up of the It was not only belligerent imperialists and fascists
world itself as an endless exhibition’ (Mitchell, 1989, that found expositions to be propitious testing grounds
p. 218). for architecturally-staged propaganda.Within the
The upshot of its co-opting by the world’s fair, of nascent space of these increasingly rather sensational
course, is that the pavilion was no longer frozen in events (and the more specialised trade fairs), the
some make-believe Arcadia, at the disposal of the fantasies of the avant-garde were likewise given air
elite alone. It was now regimented into a suburban to breed. Here too, the pavilion regained some of its
grid, and seen by thousands (for a fee, of course), at older martial connotations, becoming a rather overt
the pace of Fogg and Passepartout on a whirlwind polemical instrument – albeit of a very different kind
visit. Gone were the private, contemplative encounter now – in the hands of progressive architects. It could
and the picturesque taste of the previous century, wage war on the establishment, vindicate alternative
which dictated studious placements and perspectives aesthetic or ideological positions, and respond to
for the pavilion. Aesthetic edification was now less changing social circumstances. That buildings like Le
imperative than a didactic or purportedly educational Corbusier’s 1925 L’Esprit Nouveau, or Ludwig Mies
agenda, which barely disguised the role of exposition van der Rohe’s 1929 Barcelona Pavilion, were isolated
architecture in the normalization of capitalism. The events – surrounded by the historicist kitsch, inflated
size of such pavilions became important (especially for exoticism or corporate vulgarity that typified such fairs
Europe’s colonial powers), not just to accommodate – only made this oppositional stance more firm.
displays inside, but to impress and outwardly convey In modernist circles, the pavilion became a
authority, legitimacy or identity. This was the age of laboratory for experimentation and for showcasing
nation-building after all. It was also the age of empire. new forms, materials or techniques. It became a work
The imagination characteristic of the more fanciful of pure architecture, dressed up as a housing prototype
garden buildings of the past (be it the Indian House of or model factory. Here was a new pavilion again.
1750 at Augustusburg, the Alhambra of 1758 at Kew More than anything else, it was exhibiting itself, or
Gardens, or the Creaky Pagoda of 1786 at Tsarskoye the potential for architecture to be something else. It
Selo) found its way into these new exposition façades was oriented to the future rather than retrospectively
– in an anticipation of Disneyland avant la lettre. dwelling on some antique ideal or mythical Asia. This
Yet, what was in prior times designed to be viewed was the pavilion as architecture’s Other, its utopian
from calculated vantage points became a panoptic antagonist, critiquing or propelling it in new directions.

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Not surprisingly then, the very image of the pavilion What has been referred to by Paul Greenhalgh
was taken up not only in the domain of leisure but also as a lull in World’s Fairs through the ‘“Post-Modern”
in utopian projects responding to urgent social needs, decades’ (2011, p. 13) meant that the pavilion was more
becoming the model, for instance, for hospitals and defined by marketing and entertainment venues during
social housing, even for Ernst May’s lightweight, open- the 1980s and 90s. National pavilions at international
plan, whitewashed ‘pavilion-type’ schools in Frankfurt’s expositions (Seville in 1992; Hannover in 2000;
garden suburbs during the late 1920s (Henderson, Shanghai in 2010) (Figures 0.5-0.6) made a comeback
1997). however, with the resurgence of mega-events (Roche,
After the Second World War, the pavilion became 2003) amidst a millennial rhetoric of globalization and
the site for some of the most hotly debated tensions regeneration, or to mark centenaries in an age where
in modernist architecture – be it monumentality versus hope often doubles back into the past and away from
instrumentality, form versus function, regionalism versus its own bleak horizon. This is a nostalgia that also
universalism, or the local versus the global. The grounds drives the heritage industry, prompting the novel
of the Venice Biennale are a case in point; they form a and paradoxical activities of pavilion conservation or
microcosm, whose national pavilions reveal how these reconstruction. In 1965, for instance, Gerrit Rietveld’s
tensions played out in the wake of fascism. As the Cold Sonsbeek Pavilion (Arnhem, Netherlands, 1955) was
War escalated, utopianism was tempered by realism rebuilt; in 1986, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion
(e.g., Alison and Peter Smithson’s Patio and Pavilion of was reinstated in the grounds of Montjuïc; in 2009,
1956, with Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi); Victor Pasmore’s Apollo Pavilion (Peterlee, England,
or, conversely, it was made even more delirious by the 1968) was restored.
cybernetic fantasies from Joan Littlewood and Cedric As for what the pavilion has become more recently,
Prices’ concept of the Fun Palace (1964), through the it might be premature to say. It is still something like it
ludic technoscientism of Archigram and the architects was before, of course. But new prospects are apparent:
of Osaka ’70, to the engineering poetics of Frei Otto recycled containers, squatter tents, emergency shelters,
and Renzo Piano (Figure 0.4). nomadic lodgings, pedagogical exercises, site-specific

Figure 0.4: Renzo Piano Building Workshop, IBM Traveling Pavilion (installed in Amsterdam 1983-86), 1982. Courtesy: Renzo
Piano Building Workshop. Photograph: Gianni Berengo Gardin.

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Figure 0.5: MVRDV, Holland

Pavilion, Hannover World
Exposition 2000.
Courtesy of MVRDV.

Figure 0.6: EMBT Architects, Spanish Pavilion, Shanghai Expo 2010. Courtesy of EMBT Architects.

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installations, floating theatres, ‘smart’ machines,VR a popular ‘medium’ for many contemporaries (e.g.,
cubes, internet forums and other hybrid ventures Monika Sosnowska, Shigeru Ban, Matali Crasset,
traversing time and space, and registering the ever Atelier Bow-Wow, Dré Wapanaar, Atelier van Lieshout,
more itinerant and interconnected experience of Xefirotarch, Ernesto Neto, Marco Casagrande, Eko
twenty-first century affluence. No surprise, then, Prawoto, EXYZT) working at the interface of art and
that the pavilion – as a mobile adaptable device no architecture (Figures 0.7-0.10).
longer tied down to gardens and fairs – has become

Figure 0.7: Monika Sosnowska, 1:1, 2007, steel. Courtesy of the artist, Foksal Gallery Foundaton, The Modern Institute, Galerie
Gisela Capitain, Kurimanzutto, and Hauser & Wirth.

Figure 0.8: Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines, Hermès Pavilion, 2011, Design Tide Exhibition, Tokyo. Courtesy of Shigeru Ban
Architects.

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Figure 0.9: Matali Crasset, Feral House/Le Nichoir (Maison Sylvestre), 2011, Le Vents de Forêts Contemporary Art Program,
Fresnes au Mont, Bois de Paroches, Lorraine. Courtesy of Matali Crasset Productions. Photograph: Lucas Fréchine.

Figure 0.10: Atelier Bow-Wow and SDM Architects, BMW Guggenheim Lab Mumbai, 2012-2013, Mahim Beach, Mumbai,
Courtesy of the BMW Guggenheum Lab and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Photograph: UnCommonSense.

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A place for reflection other structures, in that while it often masquerades as

What is a pavilion? Since no single answer to this a modest or innocuous amusement, it is in fact a highly
question satisfies, perhaps all one can do is raise it, rhetorical and discursive thing, not least due to its
or consider the terms through which an answer – or age-old exhibitionary rationale and global orientation.
answers in the plural – might be tentatively approached. The extent to which pavilions give shelter to competing
Part of the reason for asking the question is to sidestep visions of the world – embattled microcosms of a
the more directly obvious answers, and ensure some kind – is for now an open question, and readers are
pause for reflection. It is not really the aim here to ultimately left to make up their own minds about
gather together a number of plausible responses, or this hypothesis. Bearing in mind Ian Hamilton Finlay’s
to have the sum of the contents make up an answer, embattled Temple of Apollo (Figure 0.11), however,
so much as to keep the question open. In that respect, we might find that this poet’s polemics in respect to
this volume of texts might itself be said to take on the gardens apply no less to pavilions: ‘Certain gardens
character of a meta-pavilion1 – or a provisional and are described as retreats when they are really attacks’
loosely-bounded forum at any rate – for starting to (Finlay, 1992, p. 38).
reflect on what pavilions are, what they have been and In the call for contributions to this volume, authors
could become. were not directed to engage with a particular period,
What the above account of the pavilion’s genealogy location or type of pavilion. They were allowed
reveals (while shallow on historical specificity or instead the freedom to ponder the pavilion on their
detail) is that the pavilion is not static. It is not a single own terms, from their own specialisms, be it art
unchanging type; in fact, it is not a type at all. The history, material culture, visual arts, architectural
pavilion is not only an amorphous thing, adapting to design, museum studies, curatorial work or heritage
several forms and functions, but is also responsive to
changes in its geographical and historical environments.
If, for instance, my opening account collapses history
into a simple diachronic narrative, the papers collected
for this issue of the Open Arts Journal paint a more
elaborate picture. They will attest to the diversity of
forms and functions that pavilions have assumed over
several recent centuries, and investigate the various
social and geographical contexts in which they have
been built and used.
The pavilion has taken on all manner of forms and
functions from the marquees of crusader-era Palestine,
to Inigo Jones’ stone China House (c. 1655) at Beckett
Hall in Oxfordshire, to the showy structures of the
2010 Shanghai Expo (to take three, not entirely
arbitrary reference points). But even so, there is a
shared sense of what a pavilion is, captured in some of
the following adjectives: smallish, ephemeral, lightweight,
adaptable, subsidiary, contingent, peripatetic, makeshift,
ceremonial, pleasant, ornamental, fantastic, playful,
enchanting, hybrid, experimental, inventive.
There may yet be something of a common thread
though. For, beneath the pavilion’s often diminutive
canopies are found some rather big ideas about
the world. Indeed, it is one of the several internal
contradictions that distinguishes the pavilion from

1 This would of course not be the first time that a

publication has been likened to a pavilion; to take just one
example, the online publication Pavilion: Journal for Politics Figure 0.11: Ian Hamilton Finlay, Temple of Apollo at Little
and Culture (www.pavilionmagazine.org) – which since 2001 Sparta, 1980, Stonypath, near Edinburgh. Courtesy of the
has served as a venue for various kinds of texts and artistic Wild Hawthorn Press and the Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay.
projects – makes this point quite literal. Photograph: Joel Robinson

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conservation. Even so, there was an emphasis on use the universal expositions onward. Indeed, some of the
and social function, if only to get away from the mere most audible and high-minded voices of modernity
admiration of form characterizing glossier architectural were dismissive. John Ruskin’s criticism of Joseph
publications. It was hoped, by asking the question ‘what Paxton’s Great Exhibition Building, that it had merely
is a pavilion?’, that a range of perspectives – social- ‘magnified a conservatory’ (Ruskin, 1854, p. 5), is well
historical, geopolitical, postcolonial, iconographical, known; his equation of architecture with permanence
pedagogical – could be brought to bear, not so much and remembrance made the pavilion a trifling thing. In
on formulating a definitive answer but on revealing how the French context, Auguste Perret declared that a tent
little has been done to raise the question itself. was not architecture (Udovicki-Selb, 1997, p. 56); his
While much has been written about specific more influential pupil, Le Corbusier, spoke derogatorily
buildings like the Barcelona Pavilion or L’Esprit of the ‘pavilloner’ (p. 58) – in spite of his well-known and
Nouveau, little has been said about the pavilion tout strategic use of pavilions to proselytise a new spirit in
court. Little thought has been given to what the pavilion the design of domestic and urban habitation.
is in more generic terms, as a type, category, medium, It could be that this condescension toward
space – or whatever it might be. Studies of garden architecture’s Other accounts for the short shrift
structures and exhibition buildings are plentiful, and that it has generally been given. As noted above,
there has been some consideration of mobile, small or outside of garden history, a burgeoning literature
temporary architecture (Kronenburg, 1996; Slavid, 2007; on fairs, and a more recent vogue for mobile, small
Siegal, 2008; Jodidio, 2011) in illustrated catalogues that or temporary architecture in a time of diplomatic,
furnish a more promotional literature. However, the climatic and economic crises, little evaluative work has
emphasis is almost always elsewhere, such that the been directed toward the subject of pavilions. Where
question of what pavilions are is taken for granted or this may be changing is in the resuscitation of the
falls to the wayside of other interests and concerns international exposition as a platform for architectural
(e.g., aesthetic form, structural and material innovation, innovation, horticultural exhibitions and programmes
portable design, representational value). like the Serpentine Pavilion (Figures 0.12-0.16), as
A broader critical discourse on the pavilion does well as the explosion of curatorial studies that have
not exist. It seems that historians, critics and architects conspired to generate new interest. In 2009, Frankfurt’s
of the past have often slighted the pavilion, associating Deutsches Architekturmuseum mounted a show, The
it with elitist pleasure, or a negligible capriciousness, Pavilion: Pleasure and Polemic in Architecture, signaling an
as if it smacked too much of kitsch, especially from emergent trend that is also noticeable in a few recent

Figure 0.12: Serpentine Gallery (formerly a refreshment pavilion), with Jean Nouvel’s 2010 Serpentine Pavilion, Kensington
Gardens, London. Courtesy of the Serpentine Gallery. Photograph: Joel Robinson.

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Figure 0.13: Daniel

Libeskind, with Arup,
Serpentine Pavilion
(Eighteen Turns), 2001,
Kensington Gardens,
London. Courtesy of
the Serpentine Gallery.
Photograph: Stephen
White.

Figure 0.14: Álvaro Siza, and Eduardo Souto de Moura, with Cecil Balmond, Serpentine Pavilion, 2005, Kensington Gardens,
London. Courtesy of the Serpentine Gallery. Photograph: James Winspear.

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Figure 0.15: Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond, Serpentine Pavilion, 2006, Kensington Gardens, London. Courtesy of the
Serpentine Gallery. Photograph: John Offenbach.

Figure 0.16: Peter

Zumthor, with Piet Oudolf,
Serpentine Pavilion 2012,
Kensington Gardens,
London. Courtesy of
the Serpentine Gallery.
Photograph: Joel Robinson.

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essays probing the topic of pavilions (Curtis, 2006; Historical themes and contexts
Bergdoll, 2009; Bussman, 2009; Hirsch, 2009; Colomina, The texts gathered in this first section are wide-
2009; Phillips, 2010; Lavin, 2012).2 ranging, both geographically and temporally. They are
What this issue on pavilions offers is a chance to a means to set up a discussion about pavilions – the
extend, consolidate and deepen reflection on what forms they have taken, the functions they have served,
kind of things pavilions are. As will become apparent, the meanings attributed to them, and the values placed
a leading emphasis is on what might be called ‘the upon them (even after they have been dismantled).
architecture of display,’ and the way in which pavilions It introduces a number of the antinomies internal to
set out different worlds or competing visions of the the pavilion, which make the various offspring of the
world. While some contributors are concerned with papilio so very hard to pin down. One such antinomy
the pavilion as an object or work of art in its own right, has already been introduced, and refers to how the
displaying itself, others home in on its contents. This relatively entertaining and innocent deportment of the
interest in what the container contains is welcome. pavilion often belies much more pompous intentions
It indicates how the meaning of the word pavilion and suspect representational claims.
has shifted to encompass the curatorial product that In ‘Not months but moments: Ephemerality,
it presents on the inside. It moreover serves as a monumentality and the pavilion in ruins,’ Ihor Junyk
corrective to a blinkered awe of pavilions for their ponders the significance of another incongruity, that
outwardly spectacular visual effects, and helps ground of the comparatively temporary aspect of pavilions
discussion in a consideration of their use and their in earlier picturesque gardens versus the air of
social and ideological milieus. permanence often sought at the universal expositions
The accent here is deliberately on the twentieth of the late nineteenth century – where it was all about
century and contemporary age; yet all of the authors projecting ‘eternity in an hour’ (Tenorio Trillo, 1996, p.
are aware that the pavilion has a longer richer legacy, 7). He suggests that a desire for reconciling these led to
and at least one of them offers a more historical case. fin-de-siècle fantasies of destruction and ruin (far from
Chronological order is secondary here, and the usual functionalist emblems of a Zeitgeist). A more macabre
hierarchical split into more polished essays on the one instantiation of this was Albert Speer’s German
hand and shorter exploratory reviews, statements and Pavilion for Paris’ 1937 Exposition. The lighter, transient
commentaries on the other (or worse, academic and pavilions of the present day, e.g., the Serpentine
non-academic texts) is relaxed in favour of a more Pavilions, are construed as a sobering rejoinder to that
thematic organization. The issue starts with essays that pathological cult of monumental classicism.
introduce key historical topics, then moves to address Also inherent in the history of pavilions, as the texts
pavilions as exhibitional mechanisms, before ending in this section (including Junyk’s overview) bring to
with coverage of exciting, recent experiments in the light, are the tensions between the retrospective and
making, use and ‘afterlife’ of pavilions. It is hoped that the progressive, past and future, dreams of remote
this forum might contribute to the lively discussions times and visions of new orders, Arcadia and Utopia,
in that ‘place between’ art and architecture (Rendell, classical and avant-garde. Pavilions might embody the
2006), where questions of public space and civic vernacular or the universal, the exotic or the norm.
participation are brought to the fore. They can become ornament or instrument, an object
in itself or a receptacle for something else. This is not
2 For proof of this trend, one does not need to look to say that the pavilion has to be one or the other, in
too far past the Serpentine Pavilion programme, founded
mutually exclusive terms. What the pavilion discloses
in 2000 by Julia Peyton-Jones (and Hans-Ulrich Obrist),
director of London’s Serpentine Gallery. In 2008, Baroness is the relativism of these terms – their slipperiness and
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza launched her own project with the contingency of their meaning.
the intention of commissioning art pavilions for different The next two essays more clearly adumbrate the
locations around the world. Such competitions, like the one notion of an ‘architecture of display.’ They are included
organised by Natalie Seroussi in 2007 on the grounds of the here because their authors are less interested in
Paris architect André Bloc’s estate in Meudon, are becoming
objects put on display than in their architecture. Jane
more common. In a project that will restructure the map of
contemporary art, the Guggenheim Foundation is presently Lomholt’s ‘At the bottom of the garden: The caffeaus
financing the construction of nineteen biennial pavilions on of the Villa Albani’ takes us back to eighteenth-century
the island of Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates). Rome, the foremost destination on the Grand Tour, and
Finally, the annual programme recentlylaunched by the Royal to a less familiar kind of pavilion, one whose present
Pavilion at Brighton, Pavilion Contemporary, will commission state of decay has overshadowed its original purpose.
artists to make works responding to this site and its
This was a leisurely café attached to an Italian villa and
architecture.

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its formal gardens, but not just any coffee house: this Philips Pavilion (also a ‘hypar’) for the 1958 Brussels
doubled as a monumental hall for the display of its Exposition. Szynalska also shows how contemporary
antiquarian owner’s collections, which were overseen nostalgia can transmute modernism’s most fleeting
by the celebrated expert Johann Joachim Winckelmann. projects into a kind of industrial picturesque.
Not only was this pavilion instrumental in confirming
Cardinal Albani’s knowledge, entitlement and lineage,
The architecture of display
but anticipated the exhibitionary architecture of the
Ever since the universal exposition saw nations split
next century.
away from exhibiting their wares together in a single
‘Folkloric modernism:Venice’s Giardini della
building that was constructed more on the scale of a
Biennale and the geopolitics of architecture’ takes us
palace, and erect their own temporary pavilions, the
further north in Italy, to the Veneto, and those public
main use of the pavilion has arguably been as a venue
gardens laid out under Napoleon. From the end of
of display. This was what Henry-Russell Hitchcock
the nineteenth century, these were effectively turned
identified as ‘exposition architecture’ in 1936, on the
into an outdoor museum of pavilions, promulgating
eve of New York’s ‘World of Tomorrow’ World’s Fair.
the cultural potency of Europe’s chief nations.
It was at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris that
Crammed with buildings in all styles, these gardens
individual national pavilions were first seen, establishing
would have horrified eighteenth-century spectators
a tradition that is still evident at such mega-events
who complained about the placement of pavilions of
today. The pavilion is now no longer an object (if it ever
different styles being too close together (Hirschfeld,
was just that), but a receptacle; any consideration of it
1779, p. 289). Here, Joel Robinson is less concerned
must now pay attention as much to what it contains as
with aesthetic judgements than postcolonial identities.
to the thing doing the containing. It is this tension that
He shows that the architectural landscape of the
the papers collected here, in this next section, explore.
world’s oldest and largest international exposition of
This section begins with a short reflection on
art becomes reconfigured in the post-fascist 1950s and
Penelope Curtis’s study of the relationship between
60s through the addition of national pavilions that show
modern architecture and sculpture; a relationship
up the ‘folkloric’ nature of architectural modernism.
that she sees as effectively dissolved in the pavilion.
Also treating the theme of folklore is Jaimee
The pavilion is not just a place for sculpture, e.g.,
Comstock-Skipp’s essay, ‘From the world’s fair to
Georg Kolbe’s Morning (1925) in Mies van der Rohe’
Disneyland: Pavilions as temples.’ It explains how the
Barcelona Pavilion, but is a work of sculpture in its own
typology of the ‘temple-pavilion’ (exploited in the
right – albeit ‘sculpture in the expanded field’ (Krauss,
crowd-pulling colonial and empire expositions of the
1979). Here Brian Hatton, is interested in the way that
first half of the century) served as the model for one of
container (architecture) and contained (sculpture)
Disneyland’s most recent rides, namely the Indiana Jones
are conflated in projects like the Smithsons’ above-
Adventure:Temple of the Forbidden Eye, which opened to
mentioned Patio and Pavilion (with Henderson and
the public in 1995. Incidentally, amusement parks had
Paolozzi), and later in the American context, with Dan
been incorporated in the grounds of world’s fairs early
Graham’s series of glass pavilions.
on, but this is a case of the former incorporating the
Observing how the Barcelona pavilion served to
exotic architectural fantasy of the latter. Comstock-
create both a ‘vitrine’ and ‘stage’ for sculpture, Hatton
Skipp’s deliberation on the temple-pavilion is a
elaborates on Curtis’ argument. He suggests that what
reminder that the architectural representation of Asia
Graham (and Mies van der Rohe before him) made
(i.e., not-Europe) at the World’s Fairs was no less a
obvious is that pavilions are both viewing lenses and
spectacular fiction than the ‘Disney Pavilion’ itself.
performative spaces in which members of the audience
The architect Karolina Szynalska’s commentary on
become both subject and object. They are participants
a little building referred to as the Papilio at Markham
that, in rendering superfluous the addition of figurative
Moor (on the A1, Britain’s longest road) brings us
sculptures to a pavilion, replace the role of statuary in
back to some of the themes with which this section
its job of activating the space of the architectural work.
began. It also raises questions about heritage and the
The question of participation in the ostensibly public
conservation of structures that were only ever meant
spaces opened up by pavilions as works of public art
to be ephemeral. Discussing this butterfly-shaped
is incidentally a topic over which much skepticism has
roadside hyperbolic paraboloid – which went from
recently been expressed (Phillips, 2010; Lavin, 2012).
serving as a petrol station to a franchise restaurant –
This is a topic to which I return in connection with a
she brings to mind Le Corbusier and Edgar Varèse’s
discussion of the contemporary pavilion below.
earlier and better known but no-longer-extant

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The relation between container and contained is by at the Asia Triennial,’ continues this interrogation of
no means a simple dichotomy. This is underscored by the ways in which the Orient has been represented
the fact that pavilions have just as often been the main in the Western hemisphere. However, her subject is
object on display. This was certainly the case at those contemporary (or twenty-first-century) art and artists
more specialised events, such as the Milan Triennale from all over Asia, and particularly art that raises
or Deutscher Werkbund exhibitions3 – events that questions of how a city like Manchester can come to
were also a reminder that, even before the expositions function as a platform – indeed, as a kind of ‘pavilion,’ in
and fairs, pavilions themselves were things to be put the expanded sense of this term – for communicating
on display. Just as buildings like Bruno Taut’s Glashaus the complex movements and identities that delineate
(Cologne, 1914) were shown in modern exhibition the place of Asia within such a metropolitan glocale.
parks (for the purpose of promoting new styles), so Kennedy reviews the 2008 and 2011 triennial
too were Georgian garden pavilions ‘curated,’ their exhibitions, critiquing their shortcomings, in order
placements and visual prospects deliberated upon in to suggest how alternative curatorial positions might
treatises and terms that in some ways presaged the move away from the model of national pavilions, and
idea of an open-air museum. Thus, the pavilion as a mediate Asia in Manchester more sensitively.
work of art – something that puts itself on display – The politics of representation also concerns the
was certainly nothing new to the twentieth century. next essay included here, which returns the reader to
What is it, though, that pavilions put on display? the question of pavilions at the Venice Biennale. Wendy
Beyond themselves, and beyond the artworks or Asquith’s assessment of the first Haitian pavilion at
assorted trinkets shown inside them, what is it that 54th Biennale in 2011, which was called ILLUMInations,
they exhibit? In the case of one very seminal exhibition enriches the discussion of the architecture of display
of 1933, as Flavia Marcello writes in ‘Fascism, middle from the angle of curatorship. Her contribution is titled:
class ideals and holiday villas at the 5th Milan Triennale,’ ‘Haiti’s first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale:
what might have been displayed was a utopian vision Anachronism or illuminating opportunity?’ She notes
of social reform, targeted at those in a position the spate of criticism that the Biennale has suffered
to improve their status or standing. In spite of the in recent decades, on account of its Eurocentrism
relative autonomy that their individual architects may as well as the rather archaic ideas about nationhood
have exercised, the modernist housing prototypes that it embodies. Asquith suggests that any effort
encountered here amounted to a very different kind to supplement this with representation of the art
of propaganda than the supranational kind found in of former colonies like Haiti will be seen as equally
world’s-fair pavilions. fraught or outdated. Be that as it may, even so, she
The next paper picks up on questions now being raises the question of whether this does not present
raised about European representations of former curators with the opportunity to illuminate or expose
colonies at expositions. Jennifer Way’s essay, ‘“A bazaar the Biennale’s structural foundations with a view to
in the coliseum”: Marketing Southeast Asian handicrafts challenging them.
in New York, 1956,’ is a probing social historical In their statement about the Dallas Pavilion, Jaspar
account of the Vietnamese Pavilion during a trade Joseph-Lester and Michael Corris remind us of another
exhibit that took place at a recently-opened New York challenge to the conservative structure of the Biennale
convention centre built in the ‘international style.’ She in recent years. For the 2013 Biennale, dubbed The
discusses the attempts to create the atmosphere of an Encyclopedic Palace, they have curated a city pavilion.
oriental bazaar there and turns to Edward Said’s classic Yet, they have done this in the form of a little book,
analysis of the politics of representing the East, bringing which is intentionally contrasted with the big, vast ‘non-
it to bear on a dissection of the Vietnamese Pavilion places’ that characterise Texas. ‘The Dallas Pavilion’
and its significance within the escalating political drama follows on from other pavilions that have pitted cities
of the Cold War. against the nation-based organization of this exposition.
Beccy Kennedy’s contribution, ‘Pavilioning Yet it is presented as printed matter, as a catalogue
Manchester: Boundaries of the local, national and global or document of the city’s seminal ‘art spaces’ and
3 Some of the other trade shows that put architecture on the works, activities and trends hosted by them. This
display through the construction of pavilions might include pavilion-cum-book considers how location is embedded
the Leipzig International Building Exhibition (1913), the in the thinking and creative output of Dallas-based
Exhibition for Unknown Architects in Berlin and Weimar artist, curators, educators, museum directors and
(1919), the New Building exhibition in Berlin (1920), the critics. Opting for a book over a building, as a space
Berlin Secession Exhibition (1923), the Turku Exhibition
that facilitates alternative curatorial strategies, Corris
(1929), the Stockholm Exhibition of Industrial Art (1930).

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and Joseph-Lester’s ‘pavilion’ evokes Victor Hugo’s (p. 218). ‘By contrast,’ Lavin declares with a kind of
prophecy about the decline of architecture in the age Tafurian melancholy, ‘today’s pavilions are for the most
of print; here, that prophecy would seem to be brought part vestigial adaptations’; they ‘are no longer proleptic,
to bear more specifically on the pavilion. having lost any connection to an advanced cultural or
historical project’ (p. 213). To be sure, she permits some
Contemporary projects exceptions: those self-reflexive projects in which artists
The final section raises more pointed questions take the lead in collaborating with architects on works
about the contemporary pavilion and its continued that intervene in reified social relations.4
meaningfulness for architectural culture. Not everyone Whether one agrees or not with these critical
is optimistic. This is not for lack of imagination in design, positions, it is against this budding debate about the
but skepticism as to the politics and public dimension contemporary pavilion that the projects covered in
of the pavilion. Despite the formalist wizardry to which this section might be considered. The texts included
pavilions have played host over the last few decades, here look at some recent examples in the creation,
there may, in the end, not be a whole lot more to them use and dismantling of pavilions. Save for Sophie
than chic advertisement or auteurial posturing. If the Kazan’s review of Zaha Hadid’s Mobile Art Pavilion
pavilion could still communicate the utopianism or (MAP) – a touring exhibition building designed in 2006,
optimism of social transformation in the immediate eventually permanently installed in the grounds of Paris’
post-war era, things appear to have moved on since Institute of the Arab World – all of these contributions
then. In contemporary pavilions – be it the annual are written by the architects or artists themselves.
Serpentine commissions or the Guggenheim biennial Generally, these are shorter texts, with the exception
buildings under construction on Saadiyat Island (Abu of Chris Tucker’s essay on the recent ‘deconstruction’
Dhabi) – whatever optimism that remains appears to of the Children’s Art Pavilion (1996) in Newcastle,
be all on the surface. Australia; in addition to being a description of the
In ‘Pavilion Politics,’ an essay of 2010 that responds project, this last paper raises poignant aesthetic and
to the Serpentine commissions, the curator Andrea moral questions in respect to temporary structures,
Phillips advanced a critique of the contemporary which have ‘lived’ among a community for some time
pavilion. (Not incidentally, she was writing in the year but are slated for demolition.
that saw Jean Nouvel build his neo-Constructivist In contrast with the dazzling curves and sleek planes
pavilion, which tipped its sunshade – so to speak – at of Hadid’s Mobile Art Pavilion,Yam Lau and Michael
the bright red follies of Paris’ Parc de la Villette, but Yuan’s ‘mobile display unit’ for the Donkey Institute of
otherwise fell quite short of Bernard Tschumi’s ludic Contemporary Art (DICA) represents an on-going
anarchism.) For Phillips, the Serpentine pavilions low-budget collaboration, which assumes its meaning in
merely aestheticise, in built form, what is already all a peripatetic activity involving chance encounters and
too often a questionable rhetoric of outreach, impact the participation of passers-by and local communities.
and participation in arts policy. While the pavilions of
‘star architects’ like Hadid, Nouvel, Frank Gehry and 4 Despite their criticism, Phillips and Lavin would probably
Daniel Libeskind capitalise on the avant-garde language not have engaged with the debates around public art
to which they pay tribute, all they really do is stage opened up by contemporary pavilions had the Serpentine
programme not existed, and had they not felt something
‘social engagement’ or engineer a ‘scenography of
was salvageable in such initiatives. Phillips seems more
democratic participation’ (Phillips, 2010, p. 114) in a way favourably disposed toward the symbolic value of projects
that entirely belies the ‘transposable commodification,’ like OMA’s Image of Europe, a tent built in Brussels in 2004
‘transnational branding’ and ‘privatized space’ (p. 106) of for an exhibition sponsored by the European Union; or
which they are really representative. the perceptual experience fostered by David Adjaye and
Writing in 2012, Sylvia Lavin finds that the ubiquity of Olafur Eliasson’s Your Black Horizon, a pavilion that debuted
at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Lavin, for her part, concedes
pavilions in the contemporary landscape is little more
that ‘the pavilion’s displacement from its privileged position
than a sign of their ‘exhaustion’ and ‘enfeeblement.’ of prolepsis has made new options available’ (p. 218). She
The pavilions of Greg Lynn and Jürgen Mayer, or any cites the collaborative experiments of Thomas Demand
of the Serpentine buildings, signal little more than the (e.g., Nagelhaus, 2007-2010, built under a viaduct in Zurich
‘pavilion’s fall from project to party décor’ (Lavin, 2012, with the assistance of Caruso St. John Architects), as well as
p. 214). The teleological thrust and social urgency of François Roche and Stéphanie Levaux of R&Sie (e.g., Hybrid
Muscle, 2004, built on the invitation of Philippe Parreno, who
examples like L’Esprit Nouveau and the Barcelona
used it as the stage-set for his film Boys from Mars, at Rirkrit
Pavilion show up the inconsequentiality of the Tiravanija and Kamin Lerdchaiprasert’s Land Foundation, near
contemporary pavilion as a ‘politically eviscerated shed’ Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand).

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Lau’s personable photo-essay tells the story of the scenography of public space but asserting the praxis
artists harnessing a bespoke kiosk to a donkey and of engagement, participation and collectivity more
crossing from rural territories into the streets of persuasively. They demonstrate how the pavilion, as a
Beijing. It is an ‘asinine’ gesture, not only provocative structure that converges on exhibitionary architecture,
in its deadpan humor (mocking the borders of art might be adapted to the local character of places, or
institution and city periphery alike), but reminiscent of redefined with a view to different publics. For these
the nomadic movements of peoples, both in the past reasons, projects like Tucker’s Children’s Art Pavilion,
and the present. When the donkey is not stopped by which existed as an umbrella for the Newcastle Art
police or harassed otherwise, audiences cluster around Gallery’s programme for widening participation, seem
it to watch videos or browse pamphlets. This unplanned to be worlds apart from the ‘party décor’ pavilions
social interaction and its documentation is a crucial erected in London’s Kensington Gardens every summer.
part of the work, a form of ethnological investigation Just a stone’s throw from the lake laid out in
of the everyday sphere, serving as a spur to other 1730 by Queen Caroline, and the former site of
‘happenings’ in more contentious or relaxed spaces. the Crystal Palace, the Serpentine Pavilions indeed
Equally collaborative and interactive are Sarah attract all the advantages of a populous world city,
Bonnemaison and Robin Muller’s ‘warming hut’ for while benefiting from the green setting in which such
a skating oval at the 2011 Canada Games in Halifax buildings were traditionally accommodated. They are
(Nova Scotia) and Harriet Harriss’ Ping-Pong Pavilion a barometer of the latest vogue, and are undeniably of
built with students from Montana State University superb imagination. Certainly, the programme is good
and Oxford Brookes University for the 2012 London advertising for its sponsors, as well as the established
Festival of Architecture. Although very different in form, architects chosen to stamp their signatures – if only
materials and usage, both projects happily underscored momentarily, for one season – on a moneyed West
the importance of sport in the history of pavilions. End landscape.Yet, what the programme does (or has
Whereas the Architextiles Lab’s pavilion sought the potential to do) is raise the very question what
to blend the hand-crafted with hi-tech electronic is a pavilion? – and whither the pavilion? It does this
interfacing and smart materials that responded to the from a more visible prospect, and maybe throwing up
body’s presence, Harriss’ project was more interested questions about public art and public space is its most
in demonstrating how to take controlled risks by important achievement.
allowing the rules of a game (ping-pong in this case) Already, however, a counter-discourse has begun
to dictate certain decisions in design.Vital to both to surface in more self-critical projects, which tend
structures is the kind of innovation that takes place to be less well-funded, unofficial, sometimes even
through play and participation, and to which the legally questionable, and always provocative (Figures
pavilion is especially conducive. 0.17-0.19). The experimental architectural collective
These project statements and reflections offer a raumlaborberlin’s The World is Not Fair – The Great
sense of the sundry forms and functions that pavilions World’s Fair 2012, conceived together with the theatre
might take today. They range from being officially company Hebbel am Ufer (HAU), challenged the
authorised, expensively
funded and well-crafted
buildings to interventionist,
grassroots and makeshift
experiments. Having a
decidedly more urban
than rural setting, they
are community-oriented,
not simply fabricating a

Figure 0.17: Paolo W.

Tamburella, Djahazi, 2009, cargo
vessel and shipping container,
serving as the pavilion of the
Cormoros Islands at the 53rd
Venice Biennale. Courtesy of
Paolo W. Tamburella.

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Figure 0.18: Sanjeev Shankar, Jugaad Canopy, 2010, oil cans, public art installation in Rajokri, New Delhi. Courtesy of Studio
Sanjeev Shankar. Photograph: Sundeep Bali and Adam Roney.

Figure 0.19: Alex Hartley, The Mobile Cabinet of Curiosities and Embassy of Nowhereisland, stationed in Newquay Harbour,
Cornwall, United Kingdom, 2012, mixed media. Photograph: Joel Robinson.

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spectacle of global expositions with the installation during the Second World War, the pavilions of the Great
of fifteen makeshift pavilions (Figures 0.20-0.22). World’s Fair 2012 sought ‘to examine ideas, systems,
They brought real issues to the table – via theatre, and phenomena by which even the most outlying
performance and video – instead of disguising the cultures are now globally connected with each other’
violence, disorder and unevenness of the world (raumlaborberlin and Hebbel am Ufer, 2012). Willem
beneath the sham magniloquence of international peace de Rooij’s pavilion housed a sound recording – Farafra
and prosperity. ‘What will be exhibited is not the world – of camels on the Libyan-Egyptian border, recalling
as it is or should be, but how we perceive, understand, the display of animals and humans alike in the colonial
and interpret it’ (raumlaborberlin and Hebbel am Ufer, villages of international expositions. Johannesburg
2012), wrote the organisers. video artist and activist Tracey Rose’s television-shaped
Erected in Berlin’s Tempelhofer Park, a former pavilion reopened the wounds of Apartheid with a
airfield of historic importance on account of its use live soap opera. Japanese playwright Toshiki Okada’s

Figure 0.20: Branca Prlic´ and Tamer Yigit,

˘ 52.4697°N 13.396°E, for The Great World’s Fair 2012 – The World Is Not Fair, an event
organized by raumlaborberlin and Hebbel am Ufer, June 2012, Tempelhof Park, Berlin. Courtesy of raumlaborberlin.

Figure 0.21: Tracey Rose, Pavilion for The Great World’s Fair 2012 – The World Is Not Fair, an event organised by raumlaborberlin
and Hebbel am Ufer, June 2012, Tempelhof Park, Berlin. Courtesy of raumlaborberlin.

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Figure 0.22: Erik Göngrich, Pavilion of the World Fair (background: Pavilion created by architectural collective Umschichten),
for The Great World’s Fair 2012 – The World Is Not Fair, an event organised by raumlaborberlin and Hebbel am Ufer, June 2012,
Tempelhof Park, Berlin. Courtesy of raumlaborberlin.

pavilion, Unable to See, memorialised the victims of the era. If these often communicated the grand ideas and
2011 T oˉ hoku disaster. Film directors Branca Prlic´ and ideals of Enlightenment, the pavilions of Tempelhofer
˘
Tamer Yigit’s conceived a pavilion for refugees, called Park seem more like postmodern billboards for
52.4697°N 13.396°E. Beirut artist Rabih Mroué’s raumlaborberlin’s motto, ‘Bye bye Utopia!’ On an
tunnel-like pavilion Double Shooting alluded to the increasingly militarised planet, where the difference
conflict in Syria. Erik Göngrich’s Pavilion of World’s Fairs between natural, diplomatic and industrial disasters is
lampooned the exposition institution with comical flags, increasingly blurry, such counter-discursive projects
slogans and murals. represent a ‘place between’ art and architecture. They
Integrated in their park-like setting by red-and- are host to the more meaningful encounters between
white-striped awnings and partitions, the festive tent- the ‘pleasure and polemics’ that pavilions have always
like structures of The World Is Not Fair sheltered very facilitated. Here, the pavilion more clearly exposes itself
different world views than those expressed in pavilions for what it is – a little tent under which big worlds and
ornamenting the Arcadias and Utopias of the modern embattled perceptions of the world come into view.

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