Pavilions are like playgrounds for architects and designers, allowing them to show off what they can do when they really set their imaginations free. Unfettered by the typical limitations of a permanent structure, they can experiment with new materials and processes, potentially producing innovations they can apply to other structures. These pavilions are often subversive in the urban environment, too, taking over public spaces and giving them back to the people or creating micro housing that falls within grey areas of the law.

Transforming Street Cinema in Venice by Omri Revesz

Created for a V-A-C Russian contemporary art foundation exhibition at the Venice Film Festival 2017, this pop-up cinema celebrated the 100th anniversary of the start of the Soviet Revolution. The modular wooden structure is collapsible, its design inspired by the logic of Russian constructivism. Its wooden frame is on wheels set into rails so it can expand to make more space for performances, or contract to create a darker, more intimate setting.

Algae Dome in Denmark by SPACE10

IKEA’s ‘Future living lab,’ known as SPACE10, debuted its ‘Algae Dome’ in Denmark a couple weeks ago, demonstrating how we might be able to grow “the supercrop of the future.” Designed by a team of engineers, the dome-shaped structure supports a network of transparent hoses, regulating their sun exposure so algae grows in the water inside them. The dome produced 450 liters of microalgae in just three days of its demonstration, which SPACE10’s chef crafted into such foods as ‘spiraling chips.’

Super Hot Pavilion in Bucharest by Morag Myerscough

Designed for the 7th edition of the ‘Summer Well Festival’ in Bucharest, Romania by artist Morag Myerscough, the ‘Super Hot’ pavilion is envisioned as a fun and whimsical place to stage and take in performances. There’s space within the structure to hang out, dance, play or zoom down a slide.

Wave of Buckets in Mexico City by Factor Eficiencia

Hundreds of painter’s buckets are connected into a walkable structure that curls up into a wave at either end, occupying the central Alameda Park in Mexico City. Designed by Factor Eficiencia and 5468796 Architecture, the installation uses the bucket as a symbol of liberation of public spaces. In Mexico, it’s common for entrepreneurs to use buckets to block off certain areas of the city so they can aggressively charge for parking.

Urban Camouflage Pavilion in London by PUP Architects

PUP Architects wanted to disguise their pop-up, entitled ‘H-VAC,’ as ordinary rooftop mechanical equipment. Do you think they pulled it off? The designers are taking advantage of UK building legislation that makes it legal to install rooftop equipment without planning permission; they believe that if you can sufficiently disguise rooftop addition as infrastructure, thousands of new micro dwellings could be added to London and other cities. The temporary structure is clad in waterproof tetra-pak shingles and includes two rooms.

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Pop Up Pavilions 15 Playful Temporary Architecture Installations

Who can resist a gigantic bubble that’s big enough to climb into? Inflatables aren’t just practical, packing down to surprisingly small packages and then popping right back up into sizable structures, they’re also just plain fun, whether they act as portable temporary architecture, offer bouncing surfaces, react to movement with light and sound or just casually perch on top of buildings like it’s no big deal.

Stage for Oerol Festival by Plastique Fantastique

An entire island is used as a stage for events during the Oerol Festival in the Netherlands, and this year, Plastique Fantastique has crafted a special way to enclose some of that space without cutting it off from its surroundings or erecting a permanent structure. This inflatable creation is a transparent orb pierced by a single tree trunk, its skin reflecting the performers as they move

#FreeTheFeed Inflatable Breast Sculpture

A campaign by Mother London to normalize breastfeeding in public, called #freethefeed, placed a gigantic inflatable breast on top of a brick building in the east London district of Shoreditch during Mother’s Day in the UK. For anyone who might be scandalized at such a sight, nearby flyers explained the project’s educational motives. “It’s hard to believe that in 2017, UK mothers still feel watlched and judged when feeding in public, by bottle or breast. This was our Mother’s Day project. A celebration of every woman’s right to decide how and where they feed their children without feeling guilty or embarrassed about their parenting choices.”

Inflatable Infinity Space

Crinkled metallic fabric creates an inflatable silver sphere in which the cosmos seem to be contained. ‘Osmo’ was created by London-based studio loop.ph for the Light Night Canning Town 2014, placed beneath London’s high-traffic A13 flyover to recreate a stretch of star-filled sky that has been lost to development.

SiloSilo by Plastique Fantastique

Creating a series of conference spaces and acting as a backdrop for video projection, a bunch of giant inflated cylinders bring awareness to the use of recycled materials as part of the traveling project SiloSilo. For example, a donut-shaped inflatable called ‘MEDUSA,’ which packs down small enough to transport in a box, represents the amount of plastic garbage produced by the city of Pilsen, Czech Republic in just three days.

Inflatable Floating Playground in Dubai

Partiers bounce, jump and dive off a series of inflatable structures spelling out ‘DUBAI’ in the water at Jumeirah Beach residence. The ‘dubaiTAG’ installation by Wibit Sports is made from nearly 100 modular components to create an inflatable waterpark.

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Architecture For Airheads 13 Intriguingly Interactive Inflatable Structures

Deliberately dark and pipe-like to recreate the feel of being in a secret subterranean space, this inflatable nightclub and bar by Bureau A comes complete with blow-up benches, tables and a DJ booth. Constructed entirely from black PVC membrane, ‘Shelter’ was commissioned as a party venue for the Federation of Swiss Architects (better known as Bund Schweizer Architekten) and installed inside the cold, concrete Pavillon Sicli in Geneva.

“The underground fascinates and completes the hygienic and pan optical work of the over-ground,” say the architects. “For one night, the black hole of a neat and well-organized society is revealed as a potential for distortion, a potential of let-go and provoke, with a slight smile, the unsaid and the sweat. The mysterious black vessel lands in the modern space of a highly engendered concrete vault; a great spatial condition to explore the corners of what is hidden.”

The space inside is clearly quite limited and dark, so it would have been interesting to see what it looks like with people inside. The concept of inflatables for temporary spaces certainly isn’t new, but it’s still pretty cool to see these structures show up in unusual shapes and configurations, standing tall within mere moments of arrival on-site and then disappearing so quickly, it’s as if they were never there.

With their cavernous abandoned spaces, the hundreds of stalled skyscraper projects throughout tropical Asia could serve a purpose by hosting low-budget micro-dwellings aimed at ‘urban nomads.’ Economic conditions put many high-rise building projects on hold, while the global housing crisis is making it difficult to impossible for young people, the middle class and the urban poor to find affordable accommodations in desirable cities. A project called ‘Light House’ offers a temporary solution.

Designed especially for mild climates, these prototype housing units consist of perforated metal grid frames, plastic-laminated plywood floors and walls made of layered textiles. “The different degrees of perforation of the walls give variation to the space within by selective filtering of external elements,” say the creators, Bangkok design firm All(zone). There are shelves for personal items, a changing room with a closet, and a bed surrounded by mosquito net.

Each one costs $1,200 to make and can be quickly assembled and disassembled, taken to a new location when the current ‘host’ is no longer available. The designers themselves lived in the prototype units to test them out. But would the average young city resident really want to live in a space like this?

The need for affordable housing, adaptability and reclaiming vacant urban spaces is undeniable, but flimsy structures like these seem like just one shaky step above homelessness, and might be better suited to serving that population instead. The transparency of the walls could be seen as a statement on what it’s like to live in the streets, perhaps making an even more profound statement on the housing crisis than the creators intended.

Four bright blue shipping containers formerly used to transport Absolut vodka have become ‘Creative Space,’ a versatile series of workspaces at the company’s headquarters in Åhus, Sweden.  Recent architectural grads Astrid Skog and Charlotte Stuveback stacked the crates and transformed them into working environments supporting a wide range of creative processes. The structure was used for Absolut’s ‘Hackathon,’ a three-day event exploring ways to creatively repurpose materials like glass vodka bottles and otherwise reduce the company’s environmental footprint.

The shipping container workspaces consist of four distinct areas: the bar, the distillery, the workshop and the bottlery. The bar offers a place to relax, drink coffee, read magazines and talk to fellow designers. The distillery is a brainstorming space, and the bottlery encourages experimentation with ideas in early phases. Finally, the workshop is where these ideas are made into real products and concepts.  One of the coolest projects that came out of Hackathon is a DIY sound system set into Absolut bottles and hung from the ceiling.

The spaces are full of their own impressive hacks, including a bunch of suspended vodka bottle lights and reuse of cardboard bottle sleeves as horizontal organizers within wall shelves. There are slide-out work surfaces with sawhorse-style legs and rolling crates full of tools tucked under tables. Now that the event is over, Absolut plans to ship the Creative Space crates to a new location so they can be used for innovation again.