Shanghai World Expo 2010-The UK Pavilion
The UK Pavilion is the most hyped about pavilion at the World Expo. Even way before the Expo opened I had seen tons of pictures and articles on this curious object. The design is certainly intriguing. Conceived by white-hot British designer Thomas Heatherwick, it is more like an art installation then a pavilion. The designers call it a "Seed Cathedral". It is meant to be a quasi-religious "contemplative space", basically an empty hall surrounded by thousands of fibre-optic rods (actually 60,000 of them) embedded with seeds from the Kew Royal Botanic Garden Seed Bank in collaboration with the Kunming Institute of Botany. The big idea is that the glass rods will be distributed to schools all over China and UK as a legacy of the UK Pavilion after the Expo.
As far as emotional resonance is concerned, this Pavilion has heaps of it. Everybody loves a big fur ball, and this is exactly that – a large cube covered in glass spikes which move in the wind. It looks kind of like Sulley of Monster Inc, don’t you think ?
The Chinese have given this Pavilion the nick name - The Dandelion. It is certainly an apt name, for it does look like some strange seed from an alien planet. It is a very long wait if you want to get in to take a closer look.
Night view of "The Dandelion".
As far as emotional resonance is concerned, this Pavilion has heaps of it. Everybody loves a big fur ball, and this is exactly that – a large cube covered in glass spikes which move in the wind. It looks kind of like Sulley of Monster Inc, don’t you think ?
The Chinese have given this Pavilion the nick name - The Dandelion. It is certainly an apt name, for it does look like some strange seed from an alien planet. It is a very long wait if you want to get in to take a closer look.
Night view of "The Dandelion".
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