The China Pavilion is the mothership of all the pavilions. It is the biggest, tallest and most expensive pavilion - and covered in eye-catching Imperial Red. You can't miss it as you enter the Expo site.
The pavilion has 3 main parts - a podium level clad in a huge aluminium screen, a roof garden above the podium, and the top section which is like an inverted pyramid. Actually the shape is taken from the eave detail of traditional Chinese temple and palace architecture - traditionally stacked wooden beams placed in a crisscross pattern to extend the depth of the roof eave. In this case - the design has been blown up a few thousand times to become the form of an entire building. I must say this is one of the more successful appropriation of a traditional form for a modern building. The resulting structure is quite dramatic and iconic.
The podium level covered in a huge aluminium screen.
The crowd waiting to enter the pavilion.
China Pavilion at night.
To get into the China Pavilion, you need to queue outside the Expo site at 5:00 a.m. to get one of the 60,000 passes given out everyday. Then you queue again to get into the Pavilion. The line is 4 hours long. I didn't have the patience to wait that long, so could only admire the pavilion from the outside.
http://gohappytravel.blogspot.com/
The pavilion has 3 main parts - a podium level clad in a huge aluminium screen, a roof garden above the podium, and the top section which is like an inverted pyramid. Actually the shape is taken from the eave detail of traditional Chinese temple and palace architecture - traditionally stacked wooden beams placed in a crisscross pattern to extend the depth of the roof eave. In this case - the design has been blown up a few thousand times to become the form of an entire building. I must say this is one of the more successful appropriation of a traditional form for a modern building. The resulting structure is quite dramatic and iconic.
The podium level covered in a huge aluminium screen.
The crowd waiting to enter the pavilion.
China Pavilion at night.
To get into the China Pavilion, you need to queue outside the Expo site at 5:00 a.m. to get one of the 60,000 passes given out everyday. Then you queue again to get into the Pavilion. The line is 4 hours long. I didn't have the patience to wait that long, so could only admire the pavilion from the outside.
http://gohappytravel.blogspot.com/
