| Urban Planet Pavilion |
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Photos courtesy of Triad Berlin Projektgesellschaft mbH
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| Theme: Humanity in Symbiosis with City and Planet |
Client: Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination |
| Fabrication: Shanghai Foremost Multimedia Co. Ltd. |
Design: Triad Berlin Projektgesellschaft mbH |
| Size: 129,166 square feet |
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Exterior Design: Shaped like the double helix of human DNA, the Urban Planet pavilion’s architectural frame of two parallel spiral ramps suggests the escalating duel between increasing urbanization and equally increasing environmental challenges. Guests making the trek inside the massive 129,166-square-foot structure (equivalent to almost 3 acres) experience one of the shortest wait times among the major pavilions: Anticipating 60,000 visitors a day to pass through its serpentine shape, the designers created unusually wide corridors to process the crowds quickly.
Pavilion Summary: Attendees ascend the circuitous coil onto the Road of Crisis, encountering five exhibits themed around Wu Xing, the five elements of ancient Chinese philosophy: water, fire, metal, wood, and earth. In the section devoted to water, for example, a transparent ceiling-to-floor cylinder swirling with the precious liquid is studded with spigots. Each faucet, representing a given country, is sized according to how much H2O that nation consumes. Further on, a row of hourglasses, with ores such as copper and steel sifting through them like grains of sand, graphically demonstrates the minerals’ fast depletion. In between each exhibit area, the clocklike motion of oversized pendulums reminds guests that time, like the earth’s resources, is running out.
Reaching the pavilion’s summit, visitors stand above a 105-foot-diameter globe. Called “Blue Earth,” the immense sphere seems to liquefy and re-form into grids signifying the growth of transportation and energy and how those networks sap our resources.
Descending into the pavilion’s second coil containing the Road to Solutions, attendees encounter exhibits extolling 100 best practices of companies and governments that are going Green. Demonstrations of eco-friendly technology are also on hand, such as Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler AG’s battery-powered Smart car. The tour ends in a domed room where a 360-degree screen shows a video entitled "The Only Earth We Have," displaying an Earth that goes from unsullied oasis to industrialized blight to a post-carbon Eden. Nearby cameras capture visitors’ images, and adds their faces into a constellation-like collage on the screen, eventually fading to a picture captioned, "Earth on Our Hands.”
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