Lead Designer: Heatherwick Studio
Key Construction Materials: steel and timber composite structure, 60,000 fiber optic filaments, aluminum sleeves
Site area: 6000 square meters
Seed Cathedral dimensions: 25m x 25m x 20m
Seed Cathedral floor area: 105 square meters
Optic fibers: 60,588
Optic fibers length: 7.5 meters
Seeds in Seed Cathedral: 217,300
Landscape area: 4490 square meters
Public park area: 2405 square meters
Accommodation area: 1525 square meters
Exhibition area: 1280 square meters
Organizers of the
2010 World Expo,
as well as construction workers are busily working towards being fully
organized for the planned opening of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai,
China on May 1, 2010. The specific event is planned to be the largest
World Expo in history ever since it began in 1851 with the Great
Exhibition at London's Crystal Palace. The theme of the Expo is "
Better City, Better Life",
and is scheduled to run until October 31, 2010. For the past few
months, large construction and renovation projects have dominated much
of Shanghai, in preparation for becoming the World's stage on May 1st.
Up to 800,000 visitors are expected each day - a total of 70 million
visitors in all visiting exhibitions from nearly 200 participants
around the world.
Sponsored by the Bureau International des Expositions, the Shanghai
Expo will be the largest the world has seen till this day. The Expo is
staged on a 5.28 square kilometer city center site beside the Huangpu
River, and features pavilions which represent the ideas and cultural
and commercial ambitions of more than 200 countries and international
organizations.
The
UK Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo expresses
British creativity and environmental engagement at the biggest event of
its kind since the Expo phenomenon began in 1851. The UK Pavilion has
been designed by
Heatherwick Studio, which is led by the internationally-acclaimed English designer
Thomas Heatherwick,
His design team won the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO)
commission to create the Pavilion following a competition that
attracted a shortlist of ambitious architectural proposals from other
teams.
Heatherwick Studio’s initial design strategic approach
for the UK Pavilion established three aims to meet the FCO’s key
expectation that the pavilion should become one of the five most
popular attractions at the Expo. The first aim was to design a pavilion
whose architecture was a direct demonstration of what it was
exhibiting. The second aim was to ensure a significant area of open
public space around it so visitors could relax and choose either to
enter the pavilion building, or see it clearly from a calm, non-queuing
vantage point. And thirdly, it would be unique among the hundreds of
other competing pavilions, events and programs.
In collaboration with other design teams Heatherwick Studio
developed a design concept where the UK Pavilion explores the
relationship between nature and city. After all London happens
to be the greenest city of its size in the world; the UK pioneered the
world’s first ever public park and the world’s first major botanical
institution, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. What a better way to
advertize the UK with a rather unconventional approach, the
Seed Cathedral.
On a 6,000 square meter UK Pavilion site sits the Seed Cathedral carefully centered.
The Seed Cathedral is 20 meters tall and is formed from 60,000 slender transparent fiber optic rods.
Each fiber optic rod is 7.5 meters long and encloses one or more seeds
at its tip. During the day, they draw daylight inwards to illuminate
the interior. At night, light sources inside each rod allowing the
entire structure to glow. When the wind blows the optic “hairs” gently
move as they create a dynamic effect for the viewers. Inside the
darkened inner chamber of the Seed Cathedral” the tips of the fiber
optic filaments form an apparently hovering galaxy of slim vitrines
containing a vast array of embedded seeds.”
The fiber optic filaments are quite responsive to exterior lighting
circumstances and any fluctuations in the exterior natural lighting are
experienced as an unpredictable luminosity. With the Seed Cathedral,
Heatherwick Studio intently wants to create an atmosphere of
admiration, respect and worship about the collection of the world’s
botanical resources. However, having achieved such a spectacular
Pavilion what sounds best of all is that it was the British
government’s intention that most of the materials of the UK Pavilion
will be reused or recycled at the end of the Expo.
from contemporist
