JUNGFRAU PAVILION. Temporary Pavilion, Steffisburg, Switzerland.

The pavilion is conceived as an architectonic contribution to the iconographic tradition of the Jungfrau series initiated by Paul Klee, Arnold Böcklin, and Ferdinand Hodler and carried until today by many other artists. Characteristically for this kind of works, the object’s shape is inspired by the mountain panorama. The Pavillion is designed for the Bernese community of steffisburg to host different open-air cultural events of the triennial festival ‘art container,

With its 250 square meters of covered surface and its 9 meters height, the ‘jungfrau pavilion’ has Jungfrau, an architectural scale developed in collaboration with the local authorities who carried the project to completion fundraising to technical engineering. Designed as a theatrical device, the structure presents itself as a lay cathedral surrounded by rapeseed fields to host daily liturgies such as concerts, speeches, gastronomic degustations and open leisure activities that celebrate the sublimeness of the alpine Bernese landscape and territory.

The pavilion features ad-hoc furniture realized with concrete casting boards to match the surrounding yellow rapeseed flower fields. The wooden roof structure consists of an ‘open truss’ system that allows the suspension of a rooftop membrane that inverts the load forces and optimizes the natural structure resistance performance of the wood construction. The pavilion is designed as a temporary structure that can be efficiently rebuilt in different contexts and host various cultural open-air events.