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Inspirational Design: Expo 2010, UK Pavillion

Yesterday, we featured Denmark’s Pavilion. Today we are featuring the UK Pavilion. It was designed by Thomas Heatherwick. It is one of those rare buildings that, quite literally, blurs the line between structure and texture. It is called the Seed Cathedral because it houses over 200,000 seeds in 60,000 resin filled rods, that act as: display pieces, natural light sources, exterior texture, and possibly structural members of the building (engineers discovered that the rods could support the structural members, but as time was not their friend, they used a more conventional method of supporting the structure.)

Why seeds? Britain is pioneering the Millennium Seed Bank partnership, a conservation project where seeds from 25% of the world's plant species are being collected, researched and stored. Many people know of this project, but no one has seen it. This was a great stage to present it to the world.

The pavilion has been nicknamed the dandelion. It is an apt nickname in that after the expo ends, the seed rods will be “blown away” to hundreds schools throughout China and the UK, to be used as teaching aids.

Here is a link to Detail Magazine that has a little more information on (you guessed it) the details of the project. Once there, look on the left side of the page in the grey box. There is a link to "Designing the Seed Catherdral." If you click on it, the magazine on the right side of the page will open to the article.