The Blur building designed by the New York architectural team

of Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller-a manufactured cloud

with an embedded viewing deck, hovering over Lake Neuchatel in

Switzerland-seems to have enjoyed nearly universal acclaim from

the moment it opened to the public in October of 2002 as part of

media Expo ’02. The reasons for this are not far to seek; they range

from what a Swiss newspaper reviewer characterizes as the liberating

effect of the zany cloud on “the crotchety Swiss”—“What a crazy,

idiosyncratic thing! How deliciously without purpose!” he exclaims-

to Diller+Scofidio’s knowing deployment of the relationship between

public architecture, the history and function of the exposition as a social

form, and the manufacture and use of spectacle in relation to both.2