Todays, pavilions are an omnipresent type of building. Unburdened to a certain degree from constraints of conventional architectures, such as program or function, pavilion designs offer architects a reign of technological and formal possibilities. Architects are commissioned for designs, in which speculation, provocation and experimentation is allowed, or even more, it is requested. Currently, visitors of Victoria & Albert Museum, run in the courtyard into an exemplary architecture experiment, posing a radical statement for contemporary digital architecture technology.

The Elytra Filament Pavilion, designed by a team of architects and engineers around Achim Menges from the Universities of Stuttgart and Munich, demonstrates a visionary for a yet to be determined digital future in the building industry. Within the context of the exhibition "Engineering the World: Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design", the museum's courtyard has been turned into a test ground for the latest emerging digital technologies, such as robotic fabrication and data mapping, bio-mimicking the hardened front wings of beetles.

Emerging from their ongoing research projects this pavilion is the first major commission for Achim Menge's team in the UK. Both, pavilion and exhibition, are open until November 6th 2016. In contrast to the (expanded) pavilion program of the Serpentine Galleries in Hide Park, the Victoria & Albert Museum offers the public, an experience of remarkable advancements in digital architecture technology this summer.

For more news about digital architecture projects at the V&A on archinect:

Fabricated robot installation at the V&A unveiled as part of their first Engineering Season

London's V&A to host a robot construction team this summer

3D printing will recreate destroyed Palmyra arch

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: a couple of things that don’t quite fit