Taking the form of a Chinese butterly, ARCPLUS’ Century Pavilion of the 10th China Flower Expo is an inspired, ecological, and innovative response to exposition architecture.
A successful practice of earth-sheltered architecture according to Chongming Eco-island Construction Program (2010-2020), Chongming Island, is moving at full speed toward its target of being a world-class ecological island.
As the biggest estuarine deposit island in the world, it places ecological protection and environmental construction as its highest priority.
The Chinese national flower festival, the 10th China Flower Expo, has reached the height of its 35 years of history promoting the development of the ecological island.
Century Pavilion, the icon of the expo, is therefore of great significance in setting up a model of ecological and sustainable development and demonstrating the determination of ‘building beautiful China.’
With these motivations, an open earth-sheltered shell was introduced to realize a low-energy consumption building that fully embodies the essence of green architecture.
For its iconic design and pioneering structure system, Century Pavilion of the 10th China Flower Expo has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The sloped shell dissolves the volume into the environment, while the utilization of climate factors makes the ‘metabolism’ of the butterfly shape synchronize with nature.
Century Pavilion meets the requirements of a temporary Expo with precision and was pre-certificated with GOLD level under the Well Being Standard.
The shell, which is the precise result of its structure, plays a crucial role in creating space.
With the curved roof covering open corridors, boundaries are blurred, space permeates through showroom volumes, and the image of traditional Chinese gardens is recreated.
The pioneering structure system takes the performance of concrete to its extreme in a simple and efficient way, reducing the waste of materials to respond to the idea of ‘ECO-EXP.’
An impressive achievement, the magnificent span was derived from a small structural thickness.
Construction was the real challenge; the duration was limited to 12 months and the curvature shell had to be low-cost.
With the attempt of applying a double-layer formwork system, an expensive prefabricated form was avoided while the construction of the shell was reduced to only five months.
The construction is, thus, an effective example of ecological, curvature-formed architecture.
The form of the Century Pavilion is abstracted from Luehdorfia Chinensis, which is a Chinese national treasure.
It took hundreds of attempts to develop a form abstract enough to represent the grace of a real butterfly while interpreting the performance of the structure.
The concise curvature enriches the spatial effect of this open pavilion, and the expression of minimalist space is enhanced by contrasting it with the colorful flower roof.
Project: Century Pavilion of the 10th China Flower Expo Architects: ARCPLUS East China Architectural Design & Research Institute Lead Architects: Ming YANG and Liyuan ZHU Design Team: Ming YANG, Liyuan ZHU, Yongqiang HUANG, Xinyi GAO, Ruiqi LV, Zesheng YAN, Chunhui CAI, and Yuxiang SHENG Consultants: Shanghai Research Institute of Building Sciences Co.Ltd. General Contractor: Shanghai Construction Group (SCG) Exhibition Designers: Motion Magic SMG and Shanghai Chenshan Botanic Garden Landscape Architects: ARCPLUS Client: Bright Eco-island Investment and Development Co., Ltd. Photographers: Wenyi Liu and Hua Wang
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