The UK pavilion at Expo 2010, colloquially known as the Seed Cathedral, was a

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

structure built by a nine-member conglomeration of

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

business and government resources directed by designer

Thomas Heatherwick Thomas Alexander Heatherwick, (born 17 February 1970) is an English designer and the founder of London-based design practice Heatherwick Studio. He works with a team of around 200 architects, designers and makers from a studio and workshop in ...

. It referenced the race to save seeds from round the world in banks, and housed 250,000

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

seed A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiospe ...

s at the end of 60,000 acrylic rods projecting from the walls of the building. The structure stood where it was built, at a cost of £25 million, in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

for the

2010 World Expo Expo 2010, officially the Expo 2010 Shanghai China, was held on both banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China, from 1 May to 31 October 2010. It was a major World Expo registered by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), in the tr ...

and won the BIE gold award for best pavilion design. The UK Pavilion catered to over 100 public and private sector events, hundreds of VIP and dignitary visits and over seven million general public visitors during the 6 months of Expo. The

cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denomination ...

has now been dismantled, with some rods donated to schools, some donated to the World Expo Museum and some being auctioned for charity.

Design

The cathedral's architecture was an elaboration of Heatherwick's 2003 work of the Sitooterie II in Essex, United Kingdom. The initial design strategy for the UK Pavilion established three aims to meet the Foreign Commonwealth Office's key expectation that the pavilion should become one of the five most popular attractions at the Expo, but built using half the budget of other Western nations. The first aim was to design a pavilion whose architecture was a direct manifestation of what it was exhibiting. The second idea 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 programmes. The studio developed the idea of the UK Pavilion exploring the relationship between nature and cities. From here came Heatherwick’s idea of involving

Kew Gardens Kew Gardens is a botanical garden, botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botany, botanical and mycology, mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its li ...

Millennium Seed Bank Partnership The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP or MSB), formerly known as the Millennium Seed Bank Project, is the largest ''ex situ'' plant conservation programme in the world coordinated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. After being awarded a Mi ...

whose mission is to collect the seeds of 25% of the world’s plant species by 2020.The design process evolved to produce two interlinked and experiential elements: an architecturally iconic

Seed Cathedral The UK pavilion at Expo 2010, colloquially known as the Seed Cathedral, was a sculpture structure built by a nine-member conglomeration of British business and government resources directed by designer Thomas Heatherwick. It referenced the race ...

, and a multi-layered landscape treatment of the 6,000m2 site. The Seed Cathedral consisted of over 60,000 25-foot acrylic optic fibers. It housed 60,000

seeds A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosperm pl ...

at the end of acrylic rods, held in place by geometrically-cut holes with the rods inserted therein.

References

External links

Architecture Critic

Edward Lifson Edward Lifson is an American journalist, architecture critic, and academic. He was the Director of Communications for the Pritzker Architecture Prize. He was also a domestic, foreign and war correspondent and bureau chief for NPR National Public R ...

interviews architect Thomas Heatherwick in Shangha
about his Seed Cathedral

UK Pavilion on Flickr (high res)UK Pavilion in action on Flickr
{{Coord, 31, 11, 10, N, 121, 28, 21, E, type:landmark_source:kolossus-zhwiki, display=title Expo 2010 World's fair architecture in China British sculpture English sculptors Thomas Heatherwick Buildings and structures completed in 2010 China–United Kingdom relations