The theme at this year’s World’s Fair is “Better City, Better Life”, and the U.K. Pavilion is far from that, but still drawing lots of attention. While most pavilions present their country’s cultural history and progressive urban ideas in an effort to convey a clear sense of national values and identity, the United Kingdom Pavilion seems to just say, “You know who we are, and you know that we’re fly” Expo visitors are luckily the ones who get to benefit from the UK’s nice new attitude.
More sculpture than building, the UK Pavilion, designed by Thomas Heatherwick, comprises 60,000 transparent acrylic rods, each 7.5 meters long, piercing a wooden frame. By day, the rods bring light to the interior, but at night they glow from LEDs. The ends of the rods contain seeds from the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species at the Kunming Institute of Botany, which gives the pavilion its nickname, the “Seed Cathedral.” When a breeze comes off the Huangpu River, it animates the pavilion, setting the translucent tentacles in slow motion. Inside, waving walls of rods surround a central island of yet more rods emerging from the floor. A few exhibits hanging onto slanted roofs over the exterior walkways seem designed to stay out of the way of the building’s idealized main form.