COMMISSIONS
2027 COLLECTION:
SOCIAL PAVILIONS FOR WATER
The inaugural collection, Social Pavilions for Water, invites a select group of architects and designers to create floating, submerged, and edge-condition objects for pools, baths, docks, and other aquatic environments.
Each commission explores the relationship between water and human connection. Some may create conditions for solitude, contemplation, and sensory focus; others may invite conversation, play, or shared attention. Floating, resting at the water's edge, or held just below the surface, each object should work as a precise intervention in the social and emotional landscape of water—not furniture, not utility, but form that shapes behavior and atmosphere through proportion, material, light, and reflection.
Future collections will take up other dimensions of life in and around water, building a lasting archive of objects that expand what the water can be.
THE OBJECT
The object may be imagined for a contained body of water such as a pool or bath, or for larger environments including lakes, rivers, and oceans. It may float, submerge, drift, anchor, illuminate, shelter, gather, or otherwise alter the experience of being in and around water.
Material construction is intentionally unrestricted. Participants are encouraged to consider air, buoyancy, reflection, transparency, texture, light, sound, and movement as active components of the work.
Objects may be functional, ceremonial, speculative, or experiential. They may support solitude or gathering, movement or stillness, play or contemplation.
THE BRIEF
Each participant may propose one original object. It should be conceived for use in or immediately adjacent to water, accommodate between one and six occupants, and be capable of production as a limited edition, durable and safe in an aquatic environment. We are drawn less to furniture or utility than to objects that address a specific spatial, behavioral, or atmospheric condition—that change how people gather, contemplate, drift, play, or observe at the water's edge and beneath its surface—using material, light, reflection, sound, and proportion as their primary tools. Conceptual clarity and formal rigor matter more than finish.
A complete submission includes a concept statement of no more than 500 words describing the idea, its spatial and behavioral proposition, and its relation to water; conceptual drawings in plan, section, and elevation, which need not be construction-ready; three to five images placing the object in context and showing it inhabited, by day or evening, in any medium from sketch to render to physical model; and a brief note on materials, fabrication, anchoring, and expected lifespan.
CURATORIAL BOARD
Projects are selected by Pavilion Objects in consultation with the curatorial board of architects, designers, curators, and cultural thinkers. Submissions are evaluated on conceptual rigor, architectural quality, relationship to water, experiential impact, feasibility of production, and contribution to the collection as a whole. Particular weight is given to proposals that introduce new forms of behavior, intimacy, or inhabitation in aquatic environments. Five commissions are awarded each year.
STRUCTURE
Selected participants work with Pavilion Objects to develop their proposals toward prototyping, publication, and edition production. Intellectual property, royalties, and production terms are negotiated individually. Completed works enter the annual collection and are documented through exhibition, photography, film, publication, and the Pavilion archive.