Studio Gruber
Back to the roots
In 1934 Peter Schunck asked Frits Peutz to design a seven-story department store as a covered market,
one flooded with daylight so that his fabrics were seemingly sold under an open sky. Peutz’s response:
a radical structure, stripped of load-bearing walls and supported by lily-pad columns instead. This socalled
Glaspaleis offered an open floor plan and utmost flexibility; its dematerialized architecture brought
the spectacle of crowds and consumption to the fore.
From Glass to Air
The proposed project revives the essential features of the Glaspaleis—but now transformed into the
logic of a mobile pavilion, a €50K budget and a contemporary sensibility. Its impact is one of a real
building (measuring 15m x 25m x 25m), however its materiality soft and paper thin.
The pavilion is essentially a floating roof, a room buoyed by air, and large enough to shelter visitors from
the elements while exposing them to the sky above. Its slanted cube is transparent on top and bottom,
its curtain-like sides are mirrored. Together these frame and capture the sky, clouds and weather
movements in a kaleidoscopic game of reflections along with views of the exhibition and visitor. People
and artworks are literally suspended and melded in an affective environment. The collapsed and
distorted images heighten and slow the perception of immediate events and time.
The space outlined by the floating room is open and flexible. Curtains—or any other lightweight spacedefining
elements suspended from the ceiling—slide on tracks. A 1,25m spaced grid of suspension
points allows for endless configurations. Anchoring the pavilion to the ground are water-filled seats,
enabling it independence from topography or soil conditions to occupy any site.
The mobile pavilion will appear in cities on the occasion of biennales, festivals or fairs (Venice,
Amsterdam, perhaps Miami). Though its presence is short lived, the pavilion engages its context by
softly reflecting its surroundings while creating a sheltered gathering place to see and to be seen from
the city. The pavilion materials are minimal; the required water and helium are supplied on site.
Temporality and consequently the notion of sustainability are conceived to produce maximum effect with
minimal means.
Construction
The pavilion performs as a large helium balloon. Its membrane is made of an aluminum-coated Mylarfoil
commonly used in multi-insulation blankets (made more robust through fine-woven silica fiber). Its
volume is filled with sufficient helium to keep the roof afloat. The skewed cube with its planar faces and
straight edges is held in shape by a matrix of monofilament fishing strings knotted to straps. The
membrane is assembled with sewing technology.
When deflated, the pavilion and its components fit into a small van.
