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For my first week of blog, I would like to talk about the China Pavilion at Shanghai Expo in 2010. As China is becoming more and more international with high economic growth, more worldwide fairs are been held in China since 21st century. It's a great opportunity for the world to get to know more about this mysterious oriental nation, the largest country in Asia. The theme of Shanghai Expo is “Better City, Better life”, the first theme about urban and low carbon city lifestyle among all the other world expos been held before.
Chinese government collected thousands of plans for the Chinese pavilion and at the end engineer Jingtang He’s plan, “The Crown of the East” won because it’s not just a traditional Chinese cultural architecture nor a purely modern building with high technology, but a great combination of the two. Jingtang He presented the pavilion with distinctive roof made of traditional dougong or brackets, which date back more than 2000 years, the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC- 467 BC). The dougong style features wooden brackets fixed layer upon layers between top of a column and a crossbeam. This unique structural component of interlocking wooden brackets is one of the most important techniques in traditional Chinese architecture.
The exterior wall and roof of “The Crown of the East” is made of a kind of special glass which can transform solar energy to electricity, and at the same time allow natural sun light to get into the pavilion. The display of this pavilion is mainly focused on the urban development of China from ancient to modern times. It had a core exhibition area on the top floor, an experience area on the second and a functional area on the first. The most famous exhibition piece at this pavilion is the animated version of “Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival”, an illustration of the charms of ancient Chinese cities.
Although the pavilion supposed to be temporary, it became such a symbol of future urban Chinese architecture that the government decided to keep it. The exterior remained the same; however, the original exhibition inside the pavilion has been changed since 2010, and different new displays have been put on to the public periodically. During this past summer of 2011, the pavilion displayed a show about animations and cartoons which young people enjoyed a lot, and a carnival was held next to the pavilion, which as a whole created a new great place for students to visit during long summer vacation.
This blue color dominated character is the mascot of Shanghai World Expo 2010. Its name is HAIBAO, the precious presence of the world. Created from the Chinese character “人”, which means people, the mascot embodies the character of Chinese culture and echoes with the designing concept of the emblem of Shanghai World Expo, using three human bodies to present the character “世”, the world. The structure of “人”, in which two strokes support each other, manifested the concept that a wonderful balanced life between city and nature should be created by all human beings. Since Chinese characters were derived from pictographic writing used in ancient times, it’s also a great innovation and smart solution by using Chinese character as the mascot.
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