Alexandra Sonnemans
Architect | Reflections & Actions
Architect | Reflections & Actions
Pavilion La Dérivée
For the cultural summer festival La Dérivée, we designed a modular wooden pavilion, that can be built (assembled and disassembled) by the community. With the pavilion, we created a collective place along the Neuchâtel lake – where the community can gather every year, and host various new activities – and an identity for the festival.
The pavilion is an ephemeral project, built to host the three-month cultural Festival La Derivée by Association ICI at Yverdon-les Bains, in Parc des Rives on the south bank of the Neuchâtel lake; a territory that popped-up as a consequence of the correction of the Jura water in 1870 and the lake moved back more than 500m from the city center of Yverdon.
Embracing the trees, creating an intimate place within the widespread park, the pavilion is created in the form of a circle oriented towards the West, facing the canal and the summer sunset, strengthening the relationship between water and park. Its essential spatial flexibility, proportion and strategical position host a cultural program.
Inspired by the traditional grain storage house in the canton of Vaud (Mazot Vaud) and to protect the pavilion from the extreme weather conditions (wind and rain), the structure is elevated from the ground and built from local materials, wood on a stone foundation.The facade consists of textiles.
The pavilion’s height of 2,4 meters inform the visitors of the particularity of the pavilion’s location: this spot used to be 2,4 meters under water. The printed maps on some of the semitransparent facade pannels are used to create awareness of the important transformation of the territory that took part 150 years ago.
The pavilion has been built in one week time during a construction workshop. More than fifty volunteers have worked in teams following the Manual of Construction, a book we made with drawings of the wooden construction elements, rebuilt with exactly the same materials as the previous year.
Credits
Type: Spatial/Urban Installation, Public Program
Location: Yverdon-les-Bains / Suisse Romande
When: Completed 2017, rebuilt every summer until 2021
Project by: rotative studio (Alexandra Sonnemans & Caterina Viguera) icw Myriam Treiber and Joshua Pereira
Client: Association Ici
Built together with 50 local volunteers