Rethinking the Pavilion

Rethinking the Pavilion investigates one unique project in detail, the Vajrasana Buddhist Retreat Centre in rural Suffolk, completed by Walters and Cohen Architects in 2018. The result was an innovative building typology that has never been designed before in any western country. The process by which the Vajrasana project came into existence has come to define and shape the way in which the practice makes architecture, through a deepened understanding of how buildings can exert powerful social impacts on all who use them.

It was the Vajrasana Buddhist Retreat Centre project that enabled Walters and Cohen Architects to shift the focus away from the ideal pavilion to the social pavilion. While pavilions are usually seen as finished objects, this book argues that they can be seen as a process, namely a social process. The book describes how shared experience defines a new way of working towards an architecture that rediscovers and enriches its communal purpose. The ethos of Walters and Cohen’s practice has thus become one that encourages a broader conversation about architecture, with buildings seeking to convey a raw sense of place and to reduce the many complexities of site and programme to the simplest arrangement and expression.