Discussion: The Pavilion and the Expanded Possibilities of Architecture
Born of fêtes, festivals, and balls, the pavilion has always been a space for the imagination: a space for architectural designers, for clients, and for visitors. Etymologically, "pavilion" - which has since come to cover a range of structures from independently roofed wings of larger building complexes to temporary lightweight structures erected for fairs or exhibitions, can be traced to the old French term "pavellun," itself derived from the Latin "papilonem" for "tent" or literally, "butterfly." Often ephemeral, its historical canopy covers at least as many buildings, mythic for their temporary apparition and for their often spectacular displays, as it does buildings that have remained - intentionally or not - to transform the fabric of every day life in parks, gardens, and cities. Lack of permanence has often been a trampoline for invention. It might thus even be possible to trace a history of architecture's leaps into new tasks, new experiences, and new formal, spatial, and structural experiments by following a meandering path of pavilions, much like the journeys of experience pavilions and follies staged in landscape gardens of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
