Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life

In continuation to the previous post on the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai by Ekta, here’s a photo-story on some of the interesting pavilion designs from the latest World Expo that took place in Milan, Italy in 2015.

As Milan is a well-known global design hub it was no surprise that here too as in previous editions of this global event architecture took center stage, with some really interesting pavilion designs. However, unlike in Shanghai, a majority of pavilions seemed to embody the spirit of the overall theme of the Expo (which was “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life“) more closely, leading to many modest projects with strong connections to the landscaped areas and outdoor spaces with many of them structured around tiny enclosed gardens.

The Pavilion Zero, designed by Michele de Lucchi, was located close to the expo’s main entrance, featuring some of the themes which formed the “backbone” of the Milan world exposition: the history of the relationship between humanity and the Planet Earth, the transformation of the natural landscape, food rituals and culture were depicted mostly through immersive installations.

This was the Dome Pavilion designed by Studio Mosae, at the centre of this stepped plaza like pavilion was a reproduction of the “Madonnina”, a 4.16m high bronze replica of the statue the tops the famous Milan Duomo covered with gold leaf.

This was the brilliant Bahrain Pavilion designed by Studio Anne Holtrop. Archaeologies of Green – was a poetic interpretation of the cultural agrarian heritage of Bahrain. The pavilion was designed in collaboration with landscape architect Anouk Vogel. With ten distinctive fruit gardens, containing trees that will be fruit–bearing at different moments throughout the six-month duration of the exhibition, the pavilion also features archaeological artifacts that celebrate the millennia long tradition of agriculture and perpetuate the many myths of Bahrain as the location of the Garden of Eden and the land of the million palm trees.

This was the Brazil Pavilion designed by Studio Arthur Casas + Atelier Marko Brajovic. In this pavilion the architects aimed to combine architecture and scenography in order to provide visitors with an experience that in their words would convey ‘Brazilian values and the aspirations of its agriculture and livestock farming according to the theme’ of this years expo. I love the playfulness of this pavilion and how the way you move through it challenges you physically and completely alters your interaction with the space!

This was the UK Pavilion designed by Wolfgang Buttress. The pavilion is developed around the concept of the beehive and how new research and technology are helping to address food security and biodiversity.

Paris-based X-TU envisioned a more cohesive, sustainable market where food is not only grown and harvested, but sold and consumed on the spot. Serving as the French pavilion, X-TU’s competition-winning scheme celebrated the country’s “rich genetic heritage” and future in innovative food production with a timber “fertile market” that supports the growth of the produce it sells.

In the Slovenian Pavilion, designed by SoNo arhitekti, five prismatical structures, positioned on the geometrically and dynamically designed surface, whose shape was reminiscent of a cultivated field, represented Slovenian diverse geographical landscapes and symbolized the fundamental ideas of sustainable development.

This was the “Austrian Pavilion” designed by team Breathe Austria. Here the pavilion itself is the exhibit, it functions as a prototype to address possible future interaction between the natural environment and urban strategies by demonstrating the potential of hybrid systems that integrate nature and technology. The central element is a dense Austrian forest brought together with technical elements in order to create a breathing microclimate. With this oxygen- and carbon-producing core, the pavilion becomes an “air generating station” – and the only building on the entire EXPO site to withstand the hot Milanese summer without conventional air conditioning.

The Russian Pavilion, designed by Speech, had a dramatic 30-meter cantilevered curved form, giving the structure a memorable silhouette which was clearly visible in the EXPO’s panorama.

This was the Gallery of Estonia designed by Kadarik Tüür Arhitektid. The entire pavilion was composed of a series of wooden ‘Nest’ boxes clustered around a triple height courtyard that worked like a small urban plaza.

This was the Slow Food Pavilion at the expo designed by swiss architectural firm and initial masterplanners of the Milan Expo – Herzog & de Meuron.

The Japanese pavilion, designed by architect Atsushi Kitagawara, fused traditional culture with advanced technology, employing a compressive strain method in which joints consist only of carved wood, without metal couplers.

This was the USA Pavilion designed by Biber Architects

This was the Vietnam Pavilion designed by Vo Trong Nghia Architects. In the words of the designers ‘..Plants on buildings harmonize the living environment which positively affect human mind. Vietnamese cities, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City lose green areas which are decreasing to less than one square meter per citizen beside the economic development. As a counter proposal to the current situation, we want to share an approach to plant trees even on top of buildings by integrating it in the building design….’

The China Pavilion; designed by Tsinghua University + Studio Link-Arc.

The UAE Pavilion, designed by Foster + Partners, was interesting for its representation of the desert landscape and planning traditions of the Emirates.

Lastly, this was the beautiful “Secret Garden” of Apple trees at the heart of the Polish Pavilion designed by 2pm Architeki.

All photos © Sahil Latheef

Around the world in a day

The year 2010 gave me an ideal opportunity to undertake a much awaited trip to China. As an architect who was bitten by wanderlust long ago, I found the ideal amalgam of both passions in the Shanghai World Expo of 2010. This event comes around every five years, hosted by a chosen city, and while the main focus behind the event is to promote urban development and allow a kind of {re}branding by the city, it has actually become more valuable as a testing ground for architectural ideas. Expos or world fairs are a legacy of the Industrial Revolution, when large fairs were put up for the benefit of regular folk and to display the latest technological and radical concepts being explored in architecture. Every expo has a theme and one can see over 200 countries manifest their interpretations and identities in their representative pavilions.

The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park for Grand International Exhibition of 1851 | Public Domain

The Crystal Palace, built in the London expo of 1858 was one such experiment embodying a radical shift from traditional load bearing technology to steel and glass balloon frame structure. The Paris expo of 1889 gave us probably the most iconic structure ever to be identified with a city – The Eiffel Tower.

General view of the Exposition Universelle, 1889 | Public Domain

Reams have been written about the paradigm shift in architecture caused by the German pavilion, in the Barcelona world expo of 1929, designed by Mies Van Der Rohe. It at once cemented Mies as a master of Modernism and continues to be studied by every architectural student and scholar, finding new interpretations in every new reading.

More recently two pavilions have captured the imagination of contemporary architects. Moshe Safdie’s Habitat -67 was considered the landmark building of the Montreal expo of 1967 (the same expo also showcased the famous geodesic dome by Buckminster Fuller). The pavilion radically re-conceived dense urban living within the Modernist apartment building typology, by exploring precast construction.

Habitat 67, as seen from street level by Taxiarchos228 | Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

The second being the Dutch pavilion by MvRdV built for the Hanover World Expo of 2000. This project explored my personal favorite conceptual idea in architecture – the programmatic stack. The architects created a six storied high pavilion with a different aspect of the Dutch natural landscape on every floor. People ascended to the top floor and gradually ambled their way down through every landscape. The lines to enter they say were endless.

‘Expo 2000 Hanover, Netherlands Pavilion’ by   Benutzer JuergenG |Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Every city that hosts the World Expo has a chance to situate the event in a new part of the city and develop the urban infrastructure and amenities for the area. Several tourists flock to see the World Expos, case in point Montreal ’67 which received 50 million visitors at a time when the population of Canada was only 20 million people. Design practitioners at the forefront of their discipline are engaged to design pavilions that best represent the participating country. Many a career has been catapulted into the limelight from this opportunity.  Ideation and execution are seen as issues of prestige and the best homage to the success of an idea is visible in the long lines of visitors snaking outside the most popular pavilions.

The most iconic pavilion of the Shanghai World Expo, was unequivocally the British Pavilion by Thomas Heatherwick. Conceived as a gift from Britain to China, the pavilion named- the Seed Cathedral, appears as a jewel that sits within its original wrapping (embodied in the modulated landscape around the pavilion). Brilliantly crafted and formed of millions of acrylic tubes that embalmed a seed at its end, the cathedral signified the importance of the seed which is the earth’s innate symbol of promise for the future. The light inside the pavilion changed subtly with the sun’s position in the sky but from the outside the structure was visually complex and dramatic, simultaneously beautiful and grotesque.

The Pavilion lit up inside by sunlight getting refracted by the tubes.

The Danish pavilion by the now renowned BIG architects had been developed as a helical cycle ramp surrounding a waterbody that the visitors could bike down,  indicative of the culture of cycling prevalent in Denmark. Categorical of BIG’s tongue in cheek approach, the Little Mermaid (one of the most visited tourist attractions in Copenhagen) was transported to the center of the pool for the entire duration of the event. The pavilion allowed the visitor to engage with it in an almost irreverent manner, not taking itself or the event seriously.

The Spanish Pavilion explored the modularity of a skin using low tech bamboo material. The interactive art displays inside were perhaps more engaging than the ad-hoc put together skin.

The Mexican pavilion – an extremely simple but engaging idea of an undulating landscape with a series of umbrella like structures creating shade,  at once reminded one of the familiar neighborhood park.

The Chilean pavilion was a well crafted experiment in the architectural use of wood for facades.

The Canadian Pavilion appeared to explore a kind of juxtapositions of textures- wooden clad exteriors enveloping a reflective interior with intermittent panels of greenery.

The Dutch pavilion was a rather simple but sadly quite ill executed experience of an urban Dutch street.

The Korean Pavilion was a statement on the newly emerging digital technology, manifest in both design and execution. The entire pavilion was constructed of laser cut metal panels and where the interiors of the pavilion were exposed, the pixel contained Korean typography. When lit up at night the pavilion was visually stunning.

The UAE pavilion formally mimicked the structure of sand dunes while modestly exploring architectural ideas of smooth form construction.

Almost at the end we came upon where the two Asian behemoths of China and India stood warily eyeing one another, as always. Each pavilion appeared to be drawing inspiration from traditionally iconic forms found in their country.  The Chinese pavilion drew inspiration from the wooden temples seen in the forbidden city in Beijing. The Indian pavilion was fashioned after the Sanchi Stupa – perhaps reminding one of Buddhism – the most significant export to come out of India.

We ended our short but intense trip around the world at the India pavilion. After standing in lines for two long days the scents of Indian food being served inside seemed familiar and comforting.  Ironically, seeing several Chinese folks sampling tandoori delicacies albeit with chopsticks, made me realize that despite our many differences, in effect the world is indeed one family or as the saying goes – vasudev kuttumbakkam.

All photos © Sahil Latheef | excluding the ones from Creative Commons

Frozen in time

As someone who grew up in Dubai,  I’m constantly asked ‘What happened to all the old buildings in the city?‘

While a lot of the interesting vernacular built-form, that originally existed all along the coast of the Arabian Gulf,  disappeared quickly in the accelerated urbanization since the discovery of oil in this region, it is also true that in reality there were only very few village-like settlements that actually existed here a mere half a century ago! In light of this it always gives me great pleasure to visit a structure that has managed to survive the onslaught of all the recent developmental madness. So imagine the sheer joy I experienced recently when I was able to see not just a couple of structures but an entire village that has remained almost unchanged since its inhabitants abandoned it in 1968!

The erstwhile pearling village of Jazirat al Hamra in the nearby emirate of Ras Al Khaimah was a coastal settlement that is today considered one of the region’s best example of a pre-oil village, displaying three distinct types of early- and mid-20th century Gulf architecture. The village whose name literally means ‘the red island’, was named for the sand it was built on. Most inhabitants in the village were from the Zaabi tribe, but not exclusively, as seen elsewhere in the Gulf.  Many prominent citizens were of Arab, Iranian, African and Baluchi descent.

A renowned pearling center not long ago, Jazirat Al Hamra wasa coastal town of great importance, given it’s strategic location towards the entrance of the Gulf.  As it attracted wealth, it also attracted foreign powers. (Interestingly, most of the major cities in the region today – Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dubai, Doha – were once important centres of the pearl trade.) For the people of Al Hamra, life was not only the sea, as they were Hadhr – coastal Bedouin. When the men journeyed to the pearling beds in the southern Gulf during the summer, women led families inland to date gardens in Khatt at the Jiri Plain. It was a journey of more than 20 kilometers, as the crow flies.

However everything changed when the Pearling industry collapsed (after the Japanese started to mass-produce cultured pearl almost a century ago) and in addition, other outside events also changed Al Hamra when wealth from the Gulf’s oil revenue began to trickle in after the 1950s. Men left for years at a time as migrant workers in Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. They returned with savings to marry and to start businesses once again. By 1968, the Zaabi tribesmen of Ras Al Khaimah numbered less than 2,500. At this time, mostly due to conflicts with the local ruler, the people of the village left to settle in Abu Dhabi, on the Batinah Coast in Oman and in other parts of Ras Al Khaimah.

After it was abandoned in 1968, the village has stood almost untouched for decades. Other old Gulf towns grew up with their cities and were renewed, rebuilt and replaced. Jazirat Al Hamra was overlooked and has remained unchanged. Today it offers a fascinating insight into the past of the region that is one of the most rapidly changing regions in the world.

Although not a popularly visited sight Jazirat Al Hamra is relatively easy to get to. It’s an hour and half drive from Dubai along the main highway (E11) that cuts across the cities of Sharjah, Ajman and Umm Al Quwain. The abandoned village is just north of the recently opened suburban resort development with the same name. It best visited early in the morning during weekends to avoid both the heat and the grueling traffic all along the route (the E11 is notorious for its traffic during peak hours). Although currently there is nothing available within the village – there are a few small convenience stores along the fringe of the old settlement and plans for a heritage village in the pipeline. Get there before they clean it all up for the tourists! 

All photos © Sahil Latheef | including the aerial photos shot using a DJI Mavic Pro drone camera