ETH Pavilion

The ETH Zurich Future Garden and Pavilion is a compression vault, built from compressed tetra-pack panels, commissioned by ETH Global for the 2015 IdeasCity festival in New York City, organised by the New Museum. Summum Engineering’s Diederik Veenendaal, while working at the Block Research Group at ETH Zurich, supported the structural engineering work carried out by Tomas Méndez Echenagucia.

Using tetra pack, a New York waste product, compressed into sheets of 9mm, the ETH Zurich Future Garden and Pavilion redefines waste, acknowledging its capacity as a substance from which to construct new cities. The vaulted pavilion was commissioned by ETH Global for the 2015 IdeasCity Festival in New York, organized by the New Museum. The shape of the vault has been designed such that the stresses in the structure are predominantly compressive, allowing a considerably weak product to act as a structural material. The pavilion followed in the footsteps of an earlier entry for a 2011 international student competition, the Tower of Babylon, where paper waste was compressed into bricks.

Read more at the Block Research Group’s project pages for the ETH Pavilion and the Tower of Babylon.

Videos

Team

Project team
Felix Heisel, Samuel P. Smith, Nicholas Ashby, Ruben Bernegger, Marta H. Wisniewska, Prof. Dirk E. Hebel | Assistant Professorship of Architecture and Construction, ETH Zurich
Dr. Tomás Méndez Echenagucia, Jean-Marc Stadelmann, Edyta Augustynowicz, Diederik Veenendaal, Michael Stirnemann, Prof. Philippe Block | Block Research Group, ETH Zurich

Location: New York, USA
Time: May 2015
StatusCompleted, disassembled
Span: 4.75 m

Services: Consultancy

In the future, there will be no waste…, Eliane, Les Architectures, June 16, 2015.

ETH Zurich designers create arched pavilion out of upcycled beverage cartons, Jenna McKnight, Dezeen, June 1, 2015.

Building with Waste, John Hill, World-Architects, May 29, 2015.

A Pavilion Made of Recycled Drink Cartons at Ideas City, Elizabeth Pagliacolo, Azure, May 28, 2015.

Turm zu Babel aus Papierklötzen, Baublatt, July 21, 2011.

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