Empty Pavilion

MCLAIN CLUTTERUniversity of Michigan

KYLE REYNOLDSUniversity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

ACSA Faculty Design Award2014-2015 Winner: Submission Materials

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Empty Pavilion

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Architecture’s role as a proponent of urban legibility has been a frequent and recurrent area of inquiry in the history of the discipline. Repeatedly, architects have implemented techniques of figuration, iconicity or imageability in their designs for urban buildings in ways that were intended to make sense of their surrounding cities, represent a public, solicit occupancy or frame common experience.

The Empty Pavilion aspires to a method of architectural legibility that is appropriate for Detroit’s evacuated urban context. Breaking with the dominant (and apparent) narrative of Detroit’s deterioration, the Empty Pavilion is conceived under the naive suspicion that a latent and viable urbanism exists within the city’s now diffuse urban context, and that through the imposition of a figurally solicitous architecture, that public may be made extant.

The pavilion is designed as a collection of architectural figures drawn-in-space. Each figure is derived as a single line tracery of an underlying lattice of closely-packed platonic solids. These lines are then “relaxed” to loosely approximate the rigorous geometry underlying their inception – thus yielding a fleeting legibility of geometric intricacy, as well as a mood or affect of entropy that resonates with the surrounding city. From a distance, the project engages the onlooker in a visual game of fleeting figuration. From certain vantage points, and only momentarily, the project recalls familiar architectural elements that may entice memory – like the roof-line of house, a chimney, a hallway, or a staircase. From other vantages, the project presents clear, and yet unfamiliar, architectural figures – thus soliciting projective association. Up-close, the

Empty PavilionDetroit, MISummer-Fall 2012

pavilion is meant to encourage physical interaction. Elements within the design suggest differing modes of occupation, such as seating, lounging and climbing. Constructed of bent steel tubing, foam and rubber, the pavilion is counter-intuitively soft to the touch, begging tactile engagement.

The relationship between the pavilion and its site is meant to lend definition to the otherwise unvariegated surrounding emptiness and vaguely recall the site’s history. The project aspires to distribute just enough material across empty space – an element Detroit has in excess – to make that space legible and promote interaction. Located in an empty field that was once divided into a series of residential lots, the project loosely describes the volume of the house that once sat in its place. The design of the ground plane further recalls the absent house, drawing the shape of its shadow in gravel surrounded by the painted profile of that cast by the new pavilion. From within, the pavilion frames views out to historically important civic buildings. For example, traversing a passage carved under and through the pavilion, the project directs one’s view out to the empty shell of Detroit’s monumental Michigan Central Railroad Station. From the opposite direction, the project frames a view of the Renaissance Center, General Motor’s headquarters in Detroit.

Empty Pavilion will remain in place for a year. The relationship between the pavilion and its surrounding public will be documented in video and photography. Thus, the project’s successes and failures in soliciting a latent public will become part of the research

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Site Axonometric

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1-2. The Empty Pavilion is designed as a collection of architectural figures drawn in space.

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3-4. Each figure is derived as a single line tracery of a lattice of closely-packed platonic solids,

which is then “relaxed” to loosely approximate the rigorous underlying geometry..

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Each figure is designed to solicit differing modes of occupation, such as seating, lounging and climbing...

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Fall 2012

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Exploded axonometric. Empty Pavilion has more than 200 hand-bent carbon

steel parts, all clad in nautical foam and liquid rubber.

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Fall 2012

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Winter 2013

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Summer 2013

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Design and construction

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