The China Pavilion, a landmark building of the Shanghai World Expo site, was recently unveiled

READY FOR EXPO: Celebrations for the completion of the China Pavilion on February 8, 2010

By WANG HAIRONG

After two years’ con

struction, the 2010 World Expo’s China Pavilion was completed on February 8,2010. The stately building is located at the main entrance to the Expo site in the Pudong New District of Shanghai.

The pavilion consists of two parts, a national hall with a majestic roof buttressed by four gigantic pillars, and regional halls featuring displays from local provinces, cities and regions. The regional halls are in the low-level structure under the national hall. The pavilion has a total fl oor space of 160,000 square meters.

The Shanghai World Expo will run from May 1 to October 31, 2010, and is expected to attract 70 million visitors, and the China Pavilion has the capacity to receive about one tenth of the total, organizers told Xinhua News Agency.

Chinese elements

The pavilion expresses many traditional elements in its shape, color and structure. It looks like a crown or grain container used in ancient China. The crown symbolizes China’s being well-governed and prosperous, while the grain container suggests the people are enjoying af fl uent lives with bountiful harvests.

Like typical traditional Chinese architecture, the pavilion has a wooden structure and a large roof supported by dougong brackets.Dougong is an amazing set of interlocking brackets joining the pillars and the roof. By transferring the weight of the roof on horizontal beams to the pillars, these small brackets are pivotal in holding the large framework together. The 56 brackets used in the pavilion stand for all of China’s ethnic groups, which symbolically represent that Chinese people,regardless of their ethnic origins, work together to build their country.

The pavilion is colored primarily by the shade of red used on the walls of the Palace Museum. Other shades of red are also used to give the exterior wall a more stylish appearance. To Chinese people, red means propitiousness, happiness and prosperity. At a traditional wedding ceremony, the bride and the groom both dress in red; and at festivals,people hang red lanterns and paste red couplets on doors and paper cuts on windows.

The design of the pavilion was carefully selected. In April 2007, Shanghai World Expo(Group) Co. Ltd. publicly solicited a design that was unique, symbolic and modern. A total of 344 designs was received in two months,and three of them were finally chosen by a committee of top academics and architects.

The three finalists were designs from architecture design institutes or companies in Guangzhou of Guangdong Province, Shanghai and Beijing. The three designs were integrated and revised to produce the fi nal design.

One of the finalists was the “Oriental Crown” designed by the Architecture Design Institute of South China University of The head of that institute, He Jingtang, was appointed as the chief designer of the pavilion. He is also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and has presided over the design of more than 50 large projects, including the venues for the badminton and wrestling competitions of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

The display plan

After the design was settled, worldwide solicitation for the design of the display area in the national hall of the China Pavilion began in December 2007. Hundreds of contestants from home and abroad submitted their designs. The design of College of City Design, China Central Academy of Fine Arts(CAFA) was fi nally chosen in March 2009.Pan Gongkai, President of CAFA was named the chief designer for the interior display plan of the national hall.

The exhibition in the national hall will feature Chinese people’s wisdom in the urbanization process. It will showcase the development of Chinese cities during the past 30 years since the implementation of the reform and opening up policy, review ancient Chinese cities and provide vision of future cityscapes. The exhibition is divided into three sections—Footprint of the East, Journey of Wisdom and Blossoming City.

Footprint of the East is located on the 49-meter-high top floor, where visitors can see a film about China’s urbanization process and look at an enlarged version of a famous traditional Chinese painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival, which depicts street scenes in the prosperous capital city of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).Journey of Wisdom is on the 41-meter-high second fl oor. Visitors can take a cable car to see models of traditional Chinese buildings,courtyards and bridges. Blossoming City is on the 33-meter-high ground fl oor, which shows how the Chinese people are applying wisdom to meet future challenges in urbanization.

Green and hi-tech

Green and cutting-edge technologies have been used in the China Pavilion. The ventilation system provides a comfortable indoor environment for visitors. The materials used in external walls are environmentfriendly products free of radiation and pollution. The special glass for doors and windows reflects heat and reduces energy consumption. Besides, a coating on the glass can convert solar energy into electricity to power the pavilion. A rainfall collecting system on the roof can recycle rainwater, and purified rainwater can be used for cleaning purposes. The top layer of the pavilion—much larger than the layers below—also serves as a natural sunshade. ■