to serve as a resting spot for those on the way up the hill and as a shortcut to the exhibition above it. After a brief walk through the flowing space of the building, visitors came out the other side and back onto the pathway.
The Pavilion was constructed on a narrow podium, 56.5 meters long, and the area encompassed by the structure itself, including interior and exterior space, measured 23 x 53 meters. Due to the slope of the hill the podium was visible only as the visitor approached the front of the Pavilion from the south. The podium surface was level with the garden at the rear of the building. The platform's surface was uniformly paved with Roman travertine. A large pool lay at the north end and a smaller pool, open to the house and enclosed on three sides, lay at the south end. Roman travertine was also used in the outer walls, with the exception of the walls surrounding the small pool which were made of green Tinian marble.
Eight cruciform columns support a roof slab made of reinforced concrete on a framework of steel and timber members. Despite the attempt to keep the roof as light as possible, "a complicated system of cantilevers and moment connections" was used to reinforce the building. All these efforts did not prevail, however, and it was necessary to employs extra, hidden, columns to reinforce the double-skinned marble walls around the exterior. A photograph taken from above the north end of the Pavilion clearly shows the relationship between the roofed area, the large pool and the wall that brackets the north end and Bonta's transparent three-dimensional drawing clearly relates the roof's overhanging sections to the exterior spaces.
The west entrance wall is transparent gray glass and it overlaps another wall of travertine marble. In the central area, usually called the "hall," a black carpet (the only floor covering) extends from the outer glass wall to a slab of rare and very expensive gol...