Pavillon de L'eau is a metro rail entrance canopy at the site of the United States Navy Memorial, adjacent to the National Archives in Washington, DC. The memorial, first proposed during the planning of the District by the French-born American architect Pierre L’Enfant, honors all past and present personnel of the U.S. Navy service. At its center, the memorial plaza is flanked by a series of cascading pools and fountains. Its northern edge is defined by two large neoclassical style mixed-use buildings, a market square, and its southern boundary is split diagonally from the National Archives by Pennsylvania Avenue. Just outside the southeast plaza fountain is the Archives/Navy Memorial station entrance taking thousands of commuters underground on a daily basis. The Pavillon de L’eau, or Water Pavilion, seeks to encapsulate the spirit of the memorial while providing shelter and a prominent gateway to and from the site. Drawing inspiration from marine technology and the legacy of Navy engineering, our design attempts to establish an interplay between  fluid form, structure and materiality. These inspirations gave nascence to the idea behind a performative aesthetic and guided by the informed decisions provided through advanced digital methodologies. We began informing our ideas by material and engineering processes utilizing similar technologies used in aerospace and naval design and engineering.