Blur Building Exhibition Pavilion, Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Blur Building Exhibition Pavilion, Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Built for the Lake Expo in 2002, New York-based multidisciplinary studio Diller + Scofidio conceptualized a most unlikely building design for a building: making nothing. Their contribution would be “formless, massless, colorless, weightless, odorless, scaleless, featureless, meaningless.” Early renderings envisioned a cloudlike mass suspended above the lake surface.

But of course a physical construction cannot literally be made of nothing, so the duo proposed over 20,000 high-pressure fog nozzles attached to a lightweight tensegrity structure to create an enveloping mist. The football-field sized structure hovered 75’ above the water’s surface on four columns sitting on piles sunk deep beneath the water. Visitors reached the Blur Building via a 400’ long walkway after donning raincoats on shore. Once “inside” and shrouded in the fine, foggy mist they could continue upstairs to the Angel Bar.