Blur

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Blur

Firm

Type

Cultural ›

YEAR

2002

The Blur Building is an architecture of atmosphere—a fog mass resulting from natural and manmade forces. Water is pumped from Lake Neuchatel, filtered, and shot as a fine mist through 35,000 high-pressure nozzles. A smart weather system reads the shifting climatic conditions of temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction and regulates water pressure at a variety of zones. Upon entering Blur, visual and acoustic references are erased. There is only an optical “white-out” and the “white-noise” of pulsing nozzles. It is a habitable medium that is formless, featureless, depthless, scaleless, massless, surfaceless, and dimensionless. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for visual fidelity in high-definition with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition. In this exposition pavilion there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself. Is an experiment in de-emphasis on an environmental scale. Movement within is unregulated. The public can ascend to the Angel Deck via a stair that emerges through the fog into the blue sky like piercing a cloud layer in flight. Submerged a half level below the deck is the Water Bar that offers a broad selection of bottled waters from around the world. Water is not only the site and primary material of the building; it is also a culinary pleasure. The public can drink the building. Within, is an immersive acoustic environment by Christian Marclay. The lightweight tensegrity structure measures 300 feet wide by 200 feet deep by 75 feet high and is supported by four columns.

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Diller Scofidio + Renfro

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Blur

Blur

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team