Built in a parcel of 6,000m2 (19,685 ft2), the Spanish Pavilion has a usable area of 7,500m2 (24,600 ft2). Aside from the spaces destined to hold the main exhibits, the pavilion counts with installations to host official receptions, an auditorium with 150 seats, a conference room equipped with simultaneous translation, a press room with a production set, and a support area for Spanish companies endowed with meeting rooms and work desks.
The Spanish Pavilion for the 2010 World Expo of Shanghai seeks to reflect upon the Spanish climate, as well as to recover the extraordinary craft of wickerwork in order to bring it back to life and to reinvent it as a new construction technique. Basketry techniques, handcrafts with natural fibers, are a global tradition shared by cultures of all times. Even though they vary from region to region, they occur in similar ways East and West. In this sense, the material choice for the pavilion attempts to bridge between two cultures, the Spanish (visiting) and the Chinese (the host). The translucent quality of the weaved natural fibers inspires the creation of courtyards that, like wicker baskets, create wonderful lighting conditions that reciprocate the veiled transparencies of certain Hispanoarabic architectural elements -partial views, to watch without being watched, an ever changing game of lights and shadows- but without falling on direct interpretations of cliche. The strong light of the exterior is sieved through by superimposed steel and wicker meshes.
The nature of the project demanded a new collaboration model between the architect and the engineer. The free form of the structure is characterized by complex curvatures that made necessary the development of an independent structural system to support the form. The search for this structural expression is defined by a search for the«tensegrity` of the form, the double curvature wrapping facade that constituted, simultaneously, the solution to the problem and a challenge. The problem of the facade was solved with a three-dimensional grid of tubular elements that come together to form double facades capable of responding to the different requirements of the building -dead loads, live loads, wind pressure and seismic activity. Interior columns, floor slabs, sheer walls and elevator cores comprise a structural system to which every part is essential to he integral performance of the system.
The façade of the building integrates a completely new element: in a mosaic like fashion, a series of Chinese characters can be appreciated superimposed with the facade. They speak of the friendship between China and Spain, reference the cultural exchange between East and West., and reference the elements of nature, like ri (sun) and yue (moon). These characters are obtained with the accentuation of the natural stains of the wicker acquired during its steaming process. The sun and the moon, two fundamental concepts of Eastern philosophy, contain the dualities of that make the world work. Miralles Tagliabue has subsumed these elements to a poetic reading of the relationship between Spain and China, announcing good omens for the future that wind collects and carries around the country. These symbols may not always be visible as the changing lighting conditions of the day and the undulation of the façade play with their reading— prompting the approach of curious Chinese visitors.
Benedetta Tagliabue graduated with the highest note at the Graduate Institute of Architecture in Venice in 1989 with a thesis on Central Park in New York. This thesis won first prize in the Youth Biennale in Barcelona in 1991, which allowed her to study the Spanish architect Enric Miralles at Columbia University in New York. Their collaboration led them to gain international recognition. Miralles’ unexpected died in 2000 and Tagliabue has continued since then running EMBT and accomplishing projects such as the Hamburg School of Music (2000), the Parc Diagonal Mar (2003), the Scottish Parliament (2004), the Mercat de Santa Caterina (2005), the Natural Gas building (2005) and recently the Spanish pavilion at the next Expo in Shanghai 2010.
