Waterlily is a group project developed for the "European Street Design Challenge" which is part of the Futur En Sein Festival held at Le Centquatre, Paris. The brief was to design a concept either of a pavilion, application, installation or service as a regeneration solution for Saint Denis area in North Paris which is well known for its lack of vibrancy. The area has always been associated with its highly industrial environment and its disjoining cultural society. 

 

Based on the brief, Canal L’Ourcq was the main target. The concept was to design a multi-purpose floating pavilion on the canal which is both detachable and attachable. Additionally real grass is also planted onto the platform in order to create an environmentally comfortable platform where visitors could sit on and relax.

Since the platform floats on the canal, the branding concept is derived from the ripple formed by the water everytime a visitor steps onto the platform. The dynamic nature of the logo is formed by the physical interaction between the visitor and Waterlily itself.  

The word WaterLily literary means "Lily on the water" which is the concept behind the dynamic branding of the platform. By embedding other events onto the word "Water" automatically conveys the venue of the event itself situating on the water – WaterFest is a music festival on the water; WaterCinema is a cinema on the water and so on. WaterLily could serve as multiple functions, for instance to host local events such as music and food festival. Apart from those, the platform could also be an alternative spot for a number of facilities such as bar, cafe, restaurant, gallery, or anything you could ever think of. 

To provide an interactive experience to the visitors, several presence light sensors are also embedded into the foundations of the pavilion which means the edges of the individual platform will illuminate when occupied during the evening. To decrease the chances of power shortage, the electricity for the entire platform is distributed from a number of solar power collectors positioned around the platform. 

 

The interaction is not limited within the present visitors – web visitors around the world are also invited to control the illumination of WaterLily everyday from 8pm – 9pm. A lucky web visitor will stand a chance to virtually control the lighting of WaterLily for 5 minutes through the website and be witnessed by the visitors who are present at WaterLily at that specific period of time. The lucky controller will also be able to watch the live playback of their control as soon as their session is over – this will provide an equal experience to the virtual visitors around the world and the visitors who are actually present at WaterLily. 

The structural concept of this project was designed in collaboration with Angelina Papaioannou, Haobo Chen, and Hiroshi Ito from Chelsea College of Arts. The branding and promotional collateral were designed by myself.