Piertzovanis Toews Sets a 15 m² Pavilion of Sliding Doors into a Swiss Village Meadow

Some buildings begin with a brief. The Pavillon of the Sliding Doors began with an open letter to the town council of Nuglar-St. Pantaleon, a village in canton Solothurn, and the letter caused a small stir. The result, completed in 2025 by Piertzovanis Toews, covers just 15 m². It is a pale green timber shelter on a raised deck in a meadow, closed by translucent panels that slide back to turn the room into a porch.

The size is not what makes it interesting. What matters is that a structure this small takes on the job of a civic building. It has no fixed program. You can open it, close it, curtain it and fill it with loose stools, so the village decides what the room is for each time it is used. We think that openness is the real design move, and the architecture is built around keeping it possible.

A Room Placed Lightly in the Meadow

With its panels shut, the pavilion reads almost as a garden shed. It is a compact, solid form sitting among daisies. Seen from a distance under a blossoming fruit tree, or through budding branches beside a gravel path, it never competes with its setting. The pale green paint helps. It sits close enough to the grass and leaves to settle in, yet it is clearly artificial enough to signal that someone made this on purpose.

The siting matters for a community project. A pavilion in a meadow, reached by a path, is not a forecourt to some other building. It is a destination, and getting there is part of using it.

Weather as a Collaborator

Federico Farinatti's photographs follow the pavilion through frost, morning mist and full summer leaf. The corrugated roof is the most utilitarian element here, and it ties the building to agricultural sheds rather than to garden follies. That reference grounds it. In the haze, the pink curtains are the only saturated colour in the field, and they make the building visible from far away without making it large.

Under a large oak in leaf, the low roof line and the shade combine into something close to an outdoor room. The canopy of the tree and the canopy of the building end up doing similar work.

The Sliding Door as Social Instrument

The title points to the main idea, and the building follows through on it. Opened up, the translucent panels stack aside and the room spills onto the lawn, where brightly coloured folding stools scatter like confetti. Half open, a single panel frames bare trees while sunlight stripes the white floorboards. Fully closed and seen straight on, the glazed front becomes a calm screen with a central post and a limestone block resting on the grass in front.

These states are not decoration. They give the community a range of degrees of enclosure, from public porch to private room, and the user controls each one. For a building whose origins lie in local debate, a structure that can be adjusted by hand feels like the right answer.

Magenta Against Green

The palette is bold and it works. Magenta mesh curtains hang against pale green framing, and the two colours sit opposite each other on the wheel, so each one sharpens the other. The mesh filters rather than blocks, softening the view of the oaks while keeping the meadow present. In close-up, the curtain drapes past exposed roof brackets toward a rough stone block in dewy grass, and soft textile, sawn timber and raw rock all sit within one glance.

The yellow and maroon stools add a third layer. Because the furniture is loose and portable, colour moves around the site from one event to the next.

Inside a Narrow Green Room

The interior is a corridor more than a hall. Fluted translucent panels line the sides, painted floorboards run the length, and an angled wall closes the end in soft green. The fluting turns the outside world into vertical bands of light and shadow, so even with every panel closed you sense the weather beyond. With the magenta curtains drawn on both sides, the room glows pink and green, which is an unusual mood for something this modest.

The narrowness will limit some uses. It also encourages others: a long table, a line of chairs facing out, a passage rather than a destination. The proportions push people to look sideways at the landscape.

Log, Bracket and Adjustable Foot

The construction, carried out by timber contractor az Holz with wood, glass and steel listed as the primary materials, is shown plainly. Round log columns hold boxy timber brackets under the roof overhang. The deck stands on adjustable steel feet just above the grass. That last detail tells you a lot: the pavilion touches the meadow lightly, levels itself on uneven ground, and suggests it could be removed or relocated without leaving a heavy mark.

Pairing an almost raw log column with precise painted joinery is a smart contrast. It keeps the building from looking either too rustic or too refined, and that middle register suits a village commission.

Plans and Drawings

The site drawings zoom in from the village, wrapped in terraced parcels and woodland, to a small clearing among scattered trees where the footprint sits as a tiny mark. The roof plan reveals the geometry behind the simple appearance: an elongated hexagon with notched chevron ends, surrounded by coloured furniture.

The isometric shows the column grid, the notched end walls and the layered roof. The row of six small plans is perhaps the most revealing drawing of the set. Each one rearranges the same room with different furniture and seating layouts, and together they turn the design into a set of possible scenarios rather than one fixed outcome.

Why This Project Matters

Most small public structures are commissioned from the top down and then handed to a community that never asked for them. This one grew out of a public conversation that started with a letter, and its architecture keeps that conversation going. The sliding panels, curtains and loose stools are a system for negotiation. Ioannis Piertzovanis and Heinrich Toews, with Thibaut Dancoisne and Lukas Fritschi, have built a room that leaves its final form to the people who use it.

For anyone working at the scale of villages and small towns, the lesson is concrete. Fifteen square metres, a corrugated roof and confident colour can give a place a shared room. You do not need a program, a large budget or an iconic silhouette. You need a structure that is easy to open, easy to read and easy to adopt.

Pavillon of the Sliding Doors by Piertzovanis Toews, Nuglar-St. Pantaleon, Switzerland. Area: 15 m². Completed: 2025. Photography: Federico Farinatti.

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