During the day, the "island", moored until September 18 in the central part of Zurich, near Bellevue Square, serves as an urban public area with a swimming pool and bar. In the evening, it becomes the center of a hundred-day festival and turns into an open-air cinema: documentaries about the work of the Biennale and the exhibits presented at exhibitions are shown on its large LED screen. They are specially prepared by students and graduates of the Zurich University of the Arts. The organizers deliberately created such a neutral, seemingly lacking support, far from the main exhibition points and close to nature, in order to give visitors the opportunity to deeply comprehend the works of contemporary art.
The pavilion's program - a swimming pool, a bar, a sun terrace and a cinema with seating steps - was originally formulated by the curator of this year's international show, Christian Jankowski. And the authors of the temporary construction, called the "Pavilion of Reflections", were 30 students of the Federal Higher Technical School of Zurich (ETH). The work, which took about 10 months, was supervised by their teachers from the educational
Tom Emerson Studios. Based on the results of an internal creative competition, the most interesting ideas were identified, which have already been turned into a realized object by joint efforts. For many students, this was the first such experience. The wooden structure was also assembled by the students themselves in one of the hangars on the other side of the lake, and then delivered to the site by water.
The choice of environmentally friendly materials and the appeal to the historically popular Swiss public bath typology are also an important part of the concept and an attempt to naturally integrate contemporary art into the everyday life of the city. At the same time, a giant screen, the light of which is reflected and amplified by the pool water, makes the entire structure interact with the city and nature in the evening.
The result of the experiment can be considered more than successful: the students felt all the stages of the project and gained a unique experience of collective work, the authoritative review of contemporary art found an attractive main platform for 300 people, and the city became a bright, iconic object.
