The Philips Pavilion was a World's Fair pavilion designed for

Expo '58 Expo 58, also known as the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (french: Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles de 1958, nl, Brusselse Wereldtentoonstelling van 1958), was a world's fair held on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Brussels, Bel ...

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

by the office of

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

. Commissioned by electronics manufacturer

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

, the pavilion was designed to house a

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

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

Chandigarh Chandigarh () is a planned city in India. Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the west and the south, and by the state of Haryana to the east. It constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which al ...

, much of the project management was assigned to

Iannis Xenakis Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde ...

, who was also an experimental composer and was influenced in the design by his composition '' Metastaseis''. The

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...

pavilion is a cluster of nine hyperbolic paraboloids in which music,

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

's ''

Poème électronique ''Poème électronique'' (English Translation: "Electronic Poem") is an 8-minute piece of electronic music by composer Edgard Varèse, written for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. The Philips corporation commissioned Le ...

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

asbestos Asbestos () is a naturally occurring fibrous silicate mineral. There are six types, all of which are composed of long and thin fibrous crystals, each fibre being composed of many microscopic "fibrils" that can be released into the atmosphere b ...

, creating a textured look to the walls. Varèse drew up a detailed spatialization scheme for the entire piece which made great use of the physical layout of the pavilion, especially the height of it. 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 Concret PH (1958) is a musique concrète piece by Iannis Xenakis, originally created for the Philips Pavilion (designed by Xenakis as Le Corbusier's assistant) at the Expo 58 and heard as audiences entered and exited the building (PH = '' parabol ...

'' was heard. The building was demolished on 30 January 1959. The European Union funded a virtual recreation of the Philips Pavilion, which was chaired by Vincenzo Lombardi from the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an impo ...

. 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, 13 November 1957, Philip's Pavilion under construction. File:Opbouw wereldtentoonstelling in Brussel, Philipspaviljoen, Bestanddeelnr 909-4204.jpg, 20 March 1958, Near opening.

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 Buildings and structures in Brussels Hyperboloid structures {{Belgium-struct-stub

Construction

References

Further reading

External links