The ‘Seed Cathedral’ at Shanghai Expo is constructed from 60,000 transparent and slender acrylic tipped aluminum rods which are 7.5 meters-long. Each strand has embedded within its tip a seed. These rods are suspended in a timber frame, which sits on a landscaped area designed to look like a creased piece of paper. The long rods, which quiver in the breeze, evoke the feeling of a dandelion and a sea urchin. The interior is quiet and illuminated by the daylight that filters past each seed through each optical hair.
Heatherwick designed the UK Pavilion with three objectives in mind – to be a pavilion whose architecture is a direct manifestation of the content it exhibits; to provide significant public open space in which visitors can relax; and to find a simple idea that is strong enough to stand out among the hundreds of competing pavilions.
Heatherwick has been able to capture these aims by creating two interlinked and experiential elements based around the subject of nature and cities – the Seed Cathedral, and a multi-layered landscape treatment of the 6,000 square meters site. The Seed Cathedral is a platform to show the work of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and their Millennium Seedbank. In the circulation zone under the landscape that surrounds the Seed Cathedral, a series of installations explore the particularity of nature and UK cities in more detail.
The RIBA Lubetkin Prize, supported by UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), was presented on June 29, 2010 at the RIBA’s headquarters in London. The UK Pavilion beat stiff competition from two other short listed buildings: Timberyard Social Housing, Dublin by O’Donnell and Tuomey and the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Centre, Alaska by David Chipperfield Architects. The prize is named after the world-renowned architect Berthold Lubetkin.
World Expo 2010 is a scheduled World Expo in the grand tradition of international fairs and expositions, which is held from May 1 to October 31, 2010. The event is the largest expo ever with two hundred countries taking part and over 70 million visitors expected. The theme of the Expo is ‘Better City, Better Life’.
