Architects: Atelier Chang
Area: 152 m²
Year: 2019
Photographs: Mr Kyungsub Shin
Lead Architect: Soohyun Chang
Engineering: Simple Works
Consultants: Simple Works, DKD Acrylics
Design Team: Soohyun Chang, Yeojin Jang, Wonji Seol, Philip Isaac, Hyunseok Kim
Clients: Gyeongnam Art Museum
Size: L 19 x W 8 m x H 3.4 metres
City: Changwon-si
Country: South Korea

Ripple Pavilion by Atelier Chang is an annual outdoor installation at Gyeongnam Art Museum in South Korea. It features thousands of acrylic tubes with mechanical joints, forming an interactive canopy that responds to visitors’ movements, creating a ripple effect. The design maximizes interaction with a double-curved geometry, refined through parametric modeling and collaboration. Dichroic film on the tubes enhances the visual impact, producing varying colors and light effects that change with movement and light angles, making the pavilion a dynamic environment that transforms with user engagement.

Ripple Pavilion is the annual outdoor pavilion project at Gyeongnam Art Museum in South Korea. The pavilion is composed of thousands of acrylic tubes connected by mechanical joints that span across a waving canopy, scattering light and color in constantly shifting expressions. This interactive installation responds to visitors’ movements, transforming the pavilion’s appearance over time. A single contact with a tube sets off a ripple effect, swinging nearby pixels and creating a dynamic play of refracted colors that turn the installation into a moving iridescent field.

Lead designer Soohyun Chang explains, “The concept of the pavilion was conceived as a responsive environment. A small initial input, such as a child’s touch, could propagate into unexpected patterns on the whole array of pixels like a butterfly effect. The playfulness of the pavilion invites people of all ages to participate and create their own moments.”

The pavilion’s geometry was carefully designed to enhance interaction, featuring a waving double curvature that optimizes contact points at various heights to accommodate different users. To refine these interactive elements within the 3D geometry, multiple iterations of the parametric model were developed and reviewed in collaboration with other consultants.

Collaborative feedback was instrumental in finalizing the pavilion’s form, resulting in areas that cater to different user interactions—some sections are ideal for standing, while others are best experienced through crawling. The combination of concave and convex spaces allows a wide range of colors to be observed from any viewpoint. Dichroic film was applied to the acrylic tubes to enhance the visual impact, making even the smallest movement noticeable. As the viewer’s angle to the light shifts, each pixel wrapped in the film displays dramatically different colors and light effects, engaging both static observers and moving passersby. This dichroic effect makes the pavilion a constantly evolving environment, where active participation is key to the installation’s experience.