> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://folio.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Moss Pavilion: an exhibition that asks you to kneel - URL: https://folio.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/moss-pavilion/ - Published: 2026-08-05T09:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-05T09:00:00.000Z - Description: A summer pavilion about the smallest plants in the garden, where everything is displayed below the knee. - Author: Lena Brandt - Tags: Architecture, #work, #Import 2026-09-30 05:40 Every summer, a botanical garden on the edge of the city commissions a temporary pavilion. It stands for five months, and then it is taken apart. This year, the garden asked us to design the exhibition inside it: a show about moss, the small, slow plants that cover much of the planet and that almost nobody looks at. ## An exhibition about looking closely Moss is hard to exhibit. It is small, green and mostly brown in summer. It does not photograph well from far away. And the most interesting thing about it, the way it grows, happens too slowly to see. So we decided the exhibition would not be about moss at all. It would be about *looking*: slowing down enough to notice something you normally step on. Every decision followed from that idea. > The exhibition asked visitors to do one thing: kneel down. > > **Lena Brandt** ## Low and slow The pavilion has no walls at eye level. All the moss is displayed at knee height or lower, on long, shallow trays of stone and wood. To see it properly, visitors have to crouch, kneel or sit on the low benches that run along each tray. Above the trays, magnifying lenses hang on long brass arms. Visitors can pull a lens down to any point and see the tiny structures that make up each plant: the leaves thinner than a hair, the capsules that release spores, the drops of water held between the stems. ![](https://folio.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/pav-moss-1.jpg) ![](https://folio.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/pav-model-1.jpg) ![](https://folio.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/pav-wood-1.jpg) Moss under the lens, the first plans and the timber joints of the pavilion. ## Words, but only a few Most exhibitions have too much text. We set ourselves a strict rule: no label longer than thirty words. Each tray has one short sentence painted directly onto the wood, in a typeface we drew for the show. The letters are rounded and soft, like the plants. A small printed guide, free at the entrance, has everything else: names, facts and a map of where each moss grows in the garden. Most visitors took the guide home rather than reading it inside. That was the point. Inside the pavilion, we wanted them looking at moss, not paper. 🌿 The moss in the exhibition was grown by the garden's staff for over two years before the show opened. At the end of the season, it was planted back into the garden's woodland, where it still grows. ## Light and water Moss needs shade and moisture. Visitors need light to see. We worked with the garden's growers to find a balance. The roof of the pavilion is made of thin timber slats that let dappled light through, like the canopy of a forest. Every morning, a fine mist sprays over the trays for a few minutes. Visitors who arrive early see the moss at its most beautiful: bright green, full of water and shining. Sam made a short time-lapse film, shown on a small screen at the exit, of the moss drying out over a hot afternoon and recovering in seconds when the mist returned. It became the most shared part of the exhibition online. ![The slatted roof throws moving shadows across the trays all afternoon.](https://folio.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/pav-light-1.jpg) The slatted roof throws moving shadows across the trays all afternoon. ## Families and school groups Although we designed the exhibition for adults, children loved it most. Kneeling on the floor comes naturally to them. We added a set of small magnifying glasses on cords for younger visitors and a simple drawing sheet: *draw what you see through the lens*. The garden received more than four thousand drawings over the summer. Some of them now hang in the garden's education centre. ## Taking it apart A temporary pavilion raises an obvious question: what happens at the end? We designed every part to be reused. The timber went to a local school to build garden beds. The stone trays became part of a new path in the garden. The brass lenses were given to the garden's education team. Only the painted labels could not be saved, so we photographed every one before they were sanded off. ![More than sixty thousand people visited over the summer. Most of them spent at least one moment on their knees.](https://folio.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/pav-visitors-1.jpg) More than sixty thousand people visited over the summer. Most of them spent at least one moment on their knees. ## Building it The pavilion was built in six weeks by a small team of carpenters, using only timber from sustainably managed forests nearby and no glue at all. Every joint is held together by wooden pegs, so the whole structure could be taken apart and rebuilt somewhere else. It was a slow way to build, and the carpenters complained at first. By the end, they were showing their families around. ### A soundscape for the garden Sam recorded the sounds of the garden over a full week: rain on the greenhouse roof, birds at dawn and the soft drip of water through moss. The recordings play very quietly from small speakers hidden under the trays, so low that most visitors do not realise they are hearing anything. Several people told us the pavilion *felt* calmer than the rest of the garden, without knowing why. The sound was doing its job. ## Credits Exhibition design by Lena Brandt and Aiko Tanaka. Typeface and graphics by Tomás Reyes. Film by Sam Okoye. Growing by the garden's horticulture team.