Swiss Sound Box, Swiss Pavilion, Expo 2000

We called the Swiss Pavilion for the 2000 Hanover Expo “Klangkörper Schweiz”. Instead of showing theoretical or virtual information to promote Switzerland, our basic idea was to offer something concrete to Expo visitors, who would be tired from studying all the messages in the other national pavilions: a welcoming place to rest, a place to just be, a place offering a tasty little something from Switzerland for thirsty or peckish visitors, and live music “unplugged”, moving and changing throughout the space, a relaxed atmosphere as well as beautifully dressed attendants.

The idea of creating a Gesamtkunstwerk had fired our imagination. Dramatic music played by musicians moving around, culinary offers, fashion and key words about Switzerland written in light on the eams and with a light hand: all this was designed to merge with the architecture, a spatial structure of wooden beams.

Taking the Expo theme of sustainability seriously, we constructed the pavilion out of 144 km of lumber with a cross-section of 20 x 10 cm, totalling 2,800 cubic metres of larch and Douglas pine from Swiss forests, assembled without glue, bolts or nails, only braced with steel cables, and with each beam being pressed down on the one below. After the closure of the Expo, the building was dismantled and the beams sold as seasoned timber.

Photos by Walter Mair & Thomas Flechtner
Text: Peter Zumthor
Courtesy of The Pritzker Architecture Prize