Shy Pavilion

The garden creates a ‘private’ space for shy and sensitive minds, a temporary retreat far from any social engagement, amplifying surrounding nature. The project is built around one of the most common plants in the world, Mimosa Pudica, well known for how it reacts when touched. If brushed its leaves turn inwards and move back a few minutes later.

Its leaves react to temperature and light as well as to physical contact. The pavilion has three levels of enclosure, and private visits are in the innermost core.
In the outer ring, translucent curtains/tents blur the boundary between inside and outside. When visitors filter though the curtain/tent and enter the pavilion, they experience the second circle: the mimosa pudica plants positioned in the middle of a grid in thin optical fibres. The narrow in between path call to visitors to walk on their toes to touch them, to activate the mimosa pudica. At the end of the course, there is a private space shielded by curtains/tents, plants, and fibres. Shy Pavilion is not just a room to echo and expand the unique features of the Mimosa Pudica, but a place where empathy between visitors and plants can thrive: every touch of a fibre, every ripple in the curtain’s edge, every visitor’s step can affect the leaves, opening and therefore changing how transparent the pavilion is.