Sunday Intro: Thomas Heatherwick's UK Pavilion

Hi

We have been featuring the best designed spaces under our Tuesday Tour segment, now on we will feature an Architect/Engineer/Designer's best work under the Sunday Intro segment. 

As part of the 1st intro, we chose the famous English designer, Thomas Heatherwick, the mastermind behind the London Cauldron stadium. While the Cauldron stadium brought in more fans for his work, we personally admire the UK Pavillion done by this ace designer studio at World Expo-2010, Shanghai, China. 

Considered as the one of its kind expo which features themed pavilions by different countries in the world which are done to represent their technology, culture and advancements, Heatherwick studio represented UK in the year 2010.

The pavilion itself sits on a crumpled landscape like enclosed in a wrapping paper. The surfaces of the pavilion were inclined, giving an amphitheatre atmosphere, with grey turf.

The Heatherwick studio's focus on the sustainable aspects is what we think is the commendable and contemporary thought for the theme "better cities, better life". 

With the building's façade representing the look of the grass, the building took its name as the Seed Cathedral with 15m hieght, the surface with silvery hairs consisting of 60,000 identical rods of clear acrylic, each 7.5m long which extend through the walls and lift up into the air. 

Using the concepts of the seeds from the seed conserving society as seen at Kew gardens botanical gardens, the building used 250,000 seeds cast into the glassy tips of these hairs. 

The daylight lights up the glass and the seeds inside while the light sources illuminate the box in the nights. 

The amount of detail and the concept to make it a seed cathedral connecting the modern day technology to the nature is what interest and amuses us in this design. The challenge to work this out in a constrained budget is definitely a daunting task. While the design won a gold medal, the pavilion had about 8 mi visitors which make it one of the top in tourist attractions of UK. 

While there many other marvels to his credit, we cannot stop admiring this one. Go for a video tour here.

Cheers

J & R