{"id":516173,"date":"2010-04-05T13:14:50","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T17:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dirt.asla.org\/?p=4274"},"modified":"2010-04-05T13:14:50","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T17:14:50","slug":"uk%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cseed-cathedral%e2%80%9d-pavilion-at-the-2010-shanghai-expo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/516173","title":{"rendered":"UK\u2019s \u201cSeed Cathedral\u201d Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThe “Seed Cathedral,” Thomas Heatherwick’s<\/a>\u00a0new UK pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo<\/a>, is composed of 60,000 translucent rods “that act as fiber-optic filaments that\u00a0channel sunlight into the\u00a0pavilion’s interior,” writes Inhabitat<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0Each 7.5-meter\u00a0”branch” of the building also contains seeds from the Millennium Seed Bank<\/a>, a program run by the Royal Botanical Society at Kew Gardens. Once the expo is completed, the\u00a0built-in seeds will be removed from the rods and given to the Chinese government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inhabitat <\/em>writes that the building breaks down the\u00a0boundaries between architecture and sculpture. “The beautiful building envelope blurs the boundaries between architecture and animated sculpture, while the area surrounding the pavilion features a network of pedestrian walkways and a landscaped park area.” During the day, the interior will be lit by daylight, while at night each rod’s embedded lighting elements will turn on, illuminating the rods from the interior.<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0architects\u00a0say the piece is\u00a0a commentary\u00a0on how the British currently approach the integration of the\u00a0natural\u00a0and built worlds.\u00a0”The UK, with its millions of gardens, thousands of public parks and garden squares, has pioneered the integration of nature into cities as a way of making them healthier places, in which to live and work. The UK pavilion encourages visitors to look again at the role of nature and wonder whether it could be used to solve the current social, economic and environmental challenges of our cities.”<\/p>\n

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) chief executive officer Sir Andrew Cahn told the Daily Mail<\/a><\/em> that the new building\u00a0would also help\u00a0rebrand the UK in the eyes of\u00a0modern Chinese.\u00a0”The Chinese view of Britain is a rather old-fashioned one; it\u2019s all to do with Britain as being a heritage country, a traditional economy – there\u2019s an awful lot of cobblestones and fog. It our hope that updating Chinese preconceptions will attract foreign investors and students to Britain, as well as encourage exports between the two countries.”<\/p>\n

The \u00a325 million building was\u00a0organized by\u00a0UKTI. Seven other UK government\u00a0agencies were also involved. David Milland, UK Foreign Minister,\u00a0launched\u00a0the event in Shanghai. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Read the article and see more photos<\/a>. Also,\u00a0check out the Millennium Seed Bank<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image credit: Thomas Heatherwick, UK Pavilion \/ Inhabitat<\/em><\/p>\n

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The “Seed Cathedral,” Thomas Heatherwick’s\u00a0new UK pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, is composed of 60,000 translucent rods “that act as fiber-optic filaments that\u00a0channel sunlight into the\u00a0pavilion’s interior,” writes Inhabitat.\u00a0Each 7.5-meter\u00a0”branch” of the building also contains seeds from the Millennium Seed Bank, a program run by the Royal Botanical Society at Kew Gardens. Once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}