The Pavillon d’Eau is a temporary pavilion made of wood and porcelain build on the Lake Geneva in 2017. It has been realized within the scope of a final Master Project at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). It is an achievement born out of the collaboration of two main Swiss universities, EPFL / laboratory ALICE and Haute école d’art et de design – Genève (HEAD) with the municipality of Saint Saphorin (393 inhabitants).

Designed by EPFL student Alexander Wolhoff, the pavilion is the outcome of six months of research, of prototyping and the dialogue between different local and academical actors. Born at EPFL and more particularly in the laboratories ALICE and LHT3, the project was also led by a partnership with the CERCCO Center for Experimentation and Realisation in Contemporary Ceramics (HEAD), where the porcelain tiles where hand made one by one. The thickness of the tiles varies between 1.3 mm and 2mm; the 150 pieces measure 213mm on 293mm.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site municipality of Saint-Saphorin en Lavaux hosted the ephemeral pavilion; the cupola bringing together wood and porcelain for one month at the lake of Geneve. The scope was to propose a pavilion that brings out Lavaux’s heritage and valorises its crystalline relief composed by waves and alpine crests. The whole project has been thought to leave no imprints on the site at all. The anchors are non aggressive to the lake’s bed. If the exterior of the pavilion has a structural language, the inside, which is only visible foots in the water, is ornamental. The porcelain tiles – enameled Bleu de Sèvre– and their particular form play with both sunbeams’ and lake’s refraction as an attempt to capture the site’s glare.