Shanghai Expo - UK Pavilion

The Brits were right - their pavilion is the best. After waiting in line for 3 hours, I started my journey towards the hairy cube. It was a pleasant and awe-inspiring one.

Underneath the folded landscape are exhibition spaces showing how cities and nature come together in the UK.


Turn around, through a steel bridge, is the entrance into the Seed Cathedral. The Seed Cathedral, designed by Heatherwick Studio, is made from a steel and timber composite structure pierced by 60,000 slender transparent acrylic rods, 7.5m long and 20mm square in section, passing through aluminum sleeves fixed at different angles on the building enclosure. The tip of each rod contains one or more seeds of a certain species. The seeds were collected in Millennium Seed Bank, a bio-diversity project initiated by Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in 2000 to collect the seeds of 25% of the world’s plant species by 2020.

Unlike the flashy multimedia displays in other technology-driven pavilions, the seeds in the UK Pavilion create an austere yet fascinating affect. They demonstrate the concept of harmony and sustainability, the diversity of nature, and the hope of life. During daytime, the rods act like fiber optic filaments, drawing in sunlight to illuminate the twinkling interior. At night, LED lights embedded in the rods will turn the whole structure into a glowing lantern.


Around the Seed Cathedral is a park as large as a standard soccer field. The angulated ground plane resembles an unfolded gift wrap. (OK, I admit this is a bit cheesy.) It provides a place for visitors to hang out and play, a theater for performances that come from the great traditions of the UK.

Shanghai Expo - pavilions

The Shanghai World Expo was really "people mountain people sea." The average number of visitors per day was 428,000 in the three days I went. (The record so far is 568,300 on August 21st.) There were long lines in front of most pavilions. It took 2 hours to get in the China Pavilion with a reservation ticket, 3 hours to the UK Pavilion, 4 to the US Pavilion, and 6 to get in the $200 million Saudi Arabia Pavilion and see the immersive 3D movie multi-projected on a 1,600 square-meter screen.

The China Pavilion takes its inspiration from Dougong. Sadly, it is just a formal imitation of the traditional structural concept.

People waiting in line under the "crown" of the China Pavilion.

The line to get in the UK Pavilion.

Interestingly, some architects had anticipated the situation and tried to provide solutions for the long waiting time. One approach is to open up the ground floor, making it into some sort of public relax space. Visitors can wait in the shaded area before going up to the exhibitions, or just wander in and out without waiting in line.

Korea Pavilion designed by Mass Studies.

Interactive light installation on the open ground floor of Yung Ho Chang's Shanghai Corporate Pavilion.

Resting space under the "umbrella" of the Swiss Pavilion.

Another approach is to design a continuous linear route that allows the crowd to move constantly. This linearity is expressed architecturally as an elevated street (by Dutchman John Körmeling) or a ramping circular loop (by BIG).

The "Happy Street" and Christmas lights of the Dutch Pavilion do remind me of Vegas.

The continuous loop in the Denmark Pavilion leads the movement smoothly from the inside to the outside. The bikes are only available during a very short time of the day though...

Shanghai Expo - planning

I visited the Shanghai World Expo for three days. It was nice to see some funky pavilions and the dazzling exhibitions inside them. But on the urban level, it was rather conventional and boring.

One of the biggest hypes of the master plan is that the 5 km2 Expo Park occupies both sides of the Huangpu River. The concept (I think this was proposed by the students of Les Ateliers Internationaux in 1999) gives the planners a great opportunity to explore innovative connections between the river banks. But what's there now? Almost nothing. There's a subway line, but completely underground. There are ferries, but not running frequently enough. With the lack of urban synergy, the two sides are not working together as a whole. All they represent is a strong sense of separation and "otherness."

Overall map of the Expo Park. Nothing was really planned to connect the two sides of the river.

View to the Pudong side from Puxi, a strong sense of "otherness."

Talking about urban connectivity... ground transportation between the zones seems pretty lame as well. There are buses, like those in another other cities; and there are electric golf cars. That's it. I walked most of the time when I was there. But the lack of creative means of mobility frustrated me. There was the monorail in Montreal '67. What do we have now?

Buses and electric golf cars are the only ways to move around faster.

Another key concept of the master plan is an elevated pedestrian walkway system. But it doesn't really make sense to me. What is it elevated from? Not vehicular traffic obviously. There are no travelators providing a different speed either. So is it just pedestrians elevated from other pedestrians for the sake of standing higher? Or is it an alibi to mark an imposed urban axis with some substantial structure? Maybe it is to increase capacity...

Expo Boulevard - the central part of the elevated walkway system.

Let's leave the axis and look at how the pavilions were placed. I understand it's hard to foresee what the countries would do with their pavilions, but it doesn't mean the layout can only be the most banal streets and blocks. More disappointingly, the street and block structure doesn't even form good urban spaces in the traditional sense. The streets are widened at some points to create the so-called squares, but as far as I can see, they are just empty spaces for nothingness. If Howard Stark sent his son (a.k.a. Iron Man) a message via the layout of Expo '64, what kind of message are we sending to the next generation with this one?

Asia Zone

"Europe Square"

"Urban Best Practices Area"

In a word, the Shanghai Expo master plan is too timid. The optimism and futuristic imagination that have characterized many previous expos are missing. Better city, better life? Boldness is what we need.