The Blur building was built by New York-based architects Diller and Scofidio on Lake Neuchâtel at Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland on occasion of the Swiss Expo 2002. The Blur building uses various forms of water –mist, dew, fog and drinking water– as the substance of its architecture. Water is pumped from the lake, filtered and shot as mist.

The public can approach Blur via a bridge. Visual and acoustical references are erased along the journey. Prior to entering the cloud, each visitor responds to a questionnaire and receives a ’smart raincoat’. The coat is used as protection from the wet environment and storage of the personality data for communication with the cloud’s computer network. Using tracking and location technologies, each visitor’s position can be identified and their character profiles compared to any other visitor.

Diller and Scofidio define Blur as ‘decidedly low-definition’. Inside Blur there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself. ‘The building is formless, featureless, depthless, scaless, massless, surfaceless and dimensionless. Movement within is unregulated’.

During the final ascent the public walks through the cloud towards the open sky. There, visitors enjoy the view, and can choose from a large selection of commercial waters, municipal waters from world capitals, and glacial waters. Visitors can drink the building, too.

© Diller and Scofidio, Blur building (2002)

© Diller and Scofidio, Blur building (2002)

© Diller and Scofidio, Blur building (2002)