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Open-air pavilions and habitable sculptures are popping up everywhere, at festivals, in parks and in motorway underpasses. We talk to the architects and designers who are seizing the opportunities these temporary projects offer for creativity and playfulness.

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Words by Veronica Simpson

It's that time of year when we northern Europeans rediscover our love of the great outdoors: one small patch of blue sky puncturing the clouds on a weekend and we're planning picnics and park walks or - for the more intrepid - entire weekends spent camping in fields, with or without a great cornucopia of festival activity surrounding us.

And when we do venture, blinking, out of our hibernation into the late spring and summer sunshine, we are increasingly encountering extraordinary and interesting structures thrown up temporarily to capitalise on this urge for al fresco activity. Whether it's a cutting-edge contemporary architecture commission (such as the Serpentine Pavilion in London's Hyde Park, now in its 15th year), temporary theatre or floating cinema, we are embracing opportunistic architecture as never before. And if the portfolio of serendipitous summer spaces is growing, it's largely thanks to public art agencies that have seized the initiative to commission art that brings as much engagement and interaction as possible with its audiences.

Since 2011, public art agency UP Projects has made temporary spaces something of a speciality. Says project curator Laura Harford: 'Contemporary Art at Festivals was a project that took place a number of years ago now and we commissioned temporary structures and projects by emerging and established architects and artists for a range of festivals, including Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party, Thames Festival, and Shambala in 2011-12. That project has now come to an end but the works still survive and I believe Studio Weave's creation is still being used at Glastonbury.

'We also curated and produced a project called Portavilion back in 2008 - commissioning four temporary pavilion structures by contemporary artists in parks and open spaces across London.' One of these structures - Annika Erikson's Smallest Cinema in the World - is still touring. A tiny gypsy caravan that she created with Hopkins Architects and Expedition Engineers, it offers seating for six within its custard-yellow walls.

Up Projects was also part of Art Moves, commissioning structures in the Olympic Park in 2014. But its most enduring invention is the floating cinema - a barge with cosy auditorium for 12 as well as a projector that can beam larger scale screenings beyond the barge (see case study). Not so much a temporary as a mobile structure, its very mobility gives it opportunities to engage with a wide variety of subjects and audiences. This summer sees the Floating Cinema leave its customary home - various canal spots around London - and venture through Berkshire and Wiltshire to Bristol, along the Kennet and Avon Canal. Artist in residence Yann Seznec will accompany the boat, gathering sounds and stories from the places visited to weave into a sound art piece. A sound and film programme will offer local history documentaries on this important Victorian canal, as well as two sci-fi open-air weekenders when it returns to London in August, one in East London and one in central London.

If public art agencies - and the general public - are enthusiastic about this emerging art/architecture genre, the same is certainly true for the practices designing them, which range from established firms such as Hopkins Architects and Duggan Morris Architects to younger, more experimental ones such as Studio Weave and Assemble.

'What's interesting about temporary stuff is that there's a freedom that permanent stuff doesn't have,' says Anthony Engi Meacock of architecture/art collective Assemble. 'You can experiment. It's not that we look for temporary stuff but when it's permanent, it makes people less inclined to take risks.'

Assemble is a pioneer in the creation of engaging spaces where you would least expect them. Its first project as a collective was Cineroleum, a disused petrol station in Clerkenwell that was transformed into a cinema for five weeks. At the time Assemble wasn't even a practice, just friends who were students of diverse subjects - architecture, English, history and philosophy - with limited work prospects (in 2010 there plenty of such students about).

'We felt a desire to do something, ' says Engi Meacock. 'The petrol station was due for development...and the developer was brave enough to be willing to let us try our ideas out.' Using the existing frame of the petrol pumps and kiosk, the group got hold of some sheets of silvery Tyvek roofing insulation and persuaded Flints Theatrical Chandlers to help rig it up into a swagged opera curtain that could be raised and lowered. Volunteers helped craft flip-up seats from scaffolding board and plastic ceiling tiles which were vacuum-formed on site.

They put a lot of thought into the smell (freshly made popcorn was crucial) and the programming. Road movies formed the core (Paris,Texas; Duel), though sci-fi also worked well (Barbarella). Says Engi Meacock: 'It wasn't the location for serious films; in the end, it had to be any film that could take a bit of road noise, and wasn't ruined by an ambulance going past.'

The project was helped by a small grant from IdeasTap, but most of the £12,000 cost came from their own pockets. But it launched the practice and its ethos and helped secure several commissions that are big on invention and resourcefulness, including a performance space under a motorway (see Folly for a Flyover case study) and a couple of temporary theatres, including Chichester Festival Theatre's Theatre on the Fly (see case study).

More recently, the group made the news as a Turner Prize nomination - a first for a group of architects - for their imaginative and exuberant approach in helping a neighbourhood transform its recession blighted street in Toxteth, Liverpool.

Architects Journal reacted to the news with a front page that declared this to be 'a rebuke to a profession that has sold its soul'. It has a point. There is something so refreshingly personal, individual and expressive about this practice against the prevailing architectural trend; something that smacks of a genuine interest in what it is to be human and to congregate. It reminds one of what architecture can be when its primary endeavour isn't money-making or a celebration of it in the form of giant glassy totems to capitalistic endeavour.

Assemble's response is slightly baffled but game. Says Engi Meacock: 'Coming under the art mantle is quite exciting, even if the output is, in the end, architectural... Personally, I wouldn't identify myself as an artist. However, it does provide a platform... and the move for art to be useful does open up opportunities for an exciting evolution. The crucial thing is people: how can you try to engage with people in the built environment in a way that's inclusive and not exclusive? That to me is the most interesting thing.

Case Study
Lûz 2.0

Ever since he had witnessed the extraordinary Burning Man event in Nevada (a desert convention of maverick makers displaying innovative, hand-built contraptions that are often set alight during festivities), London-based architect Lionel Real de Azua, an American, had dreamed of contributing his own creation. A serendipitous connection with other architect friends, designers and technicians brought that dream to reality last year when, working under the collective name Les Méchants, they debuted their Lûz 2.0 creation at the Burning Man event in August 2014.

An ethereal interaction of light and form, the pyramid structure consists of an interlocking geometric network of 35mm-thick laser-cut acrylic components, drilled and bolted to a steel-beam foundation and fitted with LED lights and sensors. The exterior is mirrored to blend into its surroundings, while a series of polychromatic LED patterns are projected on its interior floor, interacting directly with its occupants.

A proprietary pressure sensor mechanism detects movement on the floor's surface that is communicated to a central hub, which distributes the message to a corresponding LED canon. The canon changes the colour and intensity of the LEDs to throw new patterns across the structure and floor, in a symphony of light that intensifies the more people move across it.

The original design team of Lionel Real de Azua, Lucas Che Tizard and Ciaran O'Brien have now formed Red Deer as a design consultancy, and are working on a wide range of commercial and private schemes.

Design Red Deer
A/V technician Charles Matz of NYIT
Area 28 sq m
Launch UK: Summer 2013; USA: Summer 2014