Paper Pavilion

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Date: September 2017 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Area: 10m2 Function: Pavilion Status: Built (dismantled September 2026) Structural design: Yohei Tomioka (ARSTR) Organiser: CHART Client: CHART, Musling bistro Sponsor: VICE Denmark, Wasara Acquired by: Kunsthal Charlottenborg

Paper Pavilion is a pavilion clad in discarded printed matter collected across Copenhagen. Built for CHART Art Fair 2017, where it won the CHART Architecture Award, it was designed around the idea of “appropriate durability”: choosing materials for the life a structure actually has. The pavilion was later acquired by Kunsthal Charlottenborg, where it served as the reception and bookshop until September 2026.

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The fifth edition of CHART invited pavilion proposals on construction, fabrication methods, urbanisation and upcycled materials. PAN- PROJECTS started from a simple question: how long does a pavilion for a three-day fair need to last? Its answer was “appropriate durability”: choosing materials and structure for the life a building actually has, rather than for a permanence it does not need. From this standpoint, the pavilion explores paper as a primary architectural material. Paper is recyclable and, for three days, strong enough to be architecture. Its limited life becomes part of the design rather than a weakness. The project draws on the bagworm, a small insect that builds its shelter from whatever lies around it. In the same way, the pavilion was clad in discarded printed matter collected across the city. The façade became a record of Copenhagen’s everyday life, and visitors stopped to read it, finding traces of places and events they knew. This sense of play, and the conversations it started between visitors and the structure, came directly from treating used paper as a building material. After the fair, the paper could return to the city’s recycling with no further processing. The structure itself was designed to move, to be reassembled elsewhere and clad again in paper from each new place, so that every version would carry the stories of a different city. Kunsthal Charlottenborg acquired the pavilion and installed it in its entrance hall as the reception and bookshop, a second life far longer than the three days it was designed for. It remained there until September 2026.

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