The Philips Pavilion (; ) was a

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

pavilion in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

, Belgium, constructed for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (

Expo 58 Expo 58, also known as the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (; ), was a world's fair held on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Brussels, Belgium, from 17 April to 19 October 1958. It was the first major world's fair registered under the Bureau Internati ...

). Commissioned by electronics manufacturer

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

and designed by the office of

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

, it was built to house a

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

spectacle that celebrated postwar technological progress. Because Le Corbusier was busy with the planning of

Chandigarh Chandigarh is a city and union territory in northern India, serving as the shared capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana. Situated near the foothills of the Shivalik range of Himalayas, it borders Haryana to the east and Punjab in the ...

, much of the project management was assigned to Iannis Xenakis, who was also an experimental composer and was influenced in the design by his composition '' Metastaseis''. The

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...

pavilion is a cluster of nine hyperbolic paraboloids in which

Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French and American composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; h ...

's '' Poème électronique'' was spatialized by sound projectionists using telephone dials. The speakers were set into the walls, which were coated in

asbestos Asbestos ( ) is a group of naturally occurring, Toxicity, toxic, carcinogenic and fibrous silicate minerals. There are six types, all of which are composed of long and thin fibrous Crystal habit, crystals, each fibre (particulate with length su ...

, giving a textured look to the walls. Varèse drew up a detailed spatialization scheme for the entire piece, which made great use of the pavilion's physical layout, especially its height. The asbestos hardened the walls, which created a cavernous acoustic. As audiences entered and exited the building, Xenakis's

musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic ...

composition '' Concret PH'' was heard. The building was demolished on 30 January 1959. The

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

funded a virtual recreation of the Philips Pavilion, which was chaired by Vincenzo Lombardi from the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian language, Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public university, public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the List ...

. Arseniusz Romanowicz's Warszawa Ochota train station in Poland is supposedly inspired by the Philips Pavilion.

Construction

File:Corte Pabellón Philips.jpg, Floor plan File:In aanbouw zijnde Philipspaviljoen van architect Le Corbusier op het terrein van, Bestanddeelnr 909-1104.jpg, During construction (13 November 1957) File:Opbouw wereldtentoonstelling in Brussel, Philipspaviljoen, Bestanddeelnr 909-4204.jpg, Near opening (20 March 1958)

References

External links

(Building the Philips Pavilion), a Dutch documentary about the construction project.

a site about a virtual reconstruction of the Philips Pavilion with extensive information about the original site. Le Corbusier buildings Expo 58 1958 in Belgium Spatial music Philips World's fair architecture in Belgium Former buildings and structures in Belgium Hyperboloid structures {{Belgium-struct-stub

Construction

References

Further reading

External links