| Videos | ? Latest |
|
? Feature | ? Sports | ? Your Videos |
Shanghai Corporate Pavilion
0 
Dreaming big is what the Expo is all about. Whether it's about new technology, or a creative invention, the grand event is where many have made their debut. Inspired by the idea of the metamorphosis of a butterfly and traditional Chinese philosophy, the Shanghai Corporate Pavilion is dreaming up some ideas of its own. The pavilion is trying to connect the old and the new to predict what our life may look like in the future.
You may see construction going on everywhere in this busy city, and this one looks no special. This area located on the northern part of Huang Pu River is where the Shanghai Corporate Pavilion will be in the 2010 Expo, and in fact, it IS a little bit special. Because you won't see anything corporate as you may have expected, all you going to see is about DREAM.
In fact, pavilion organizers don't call it a pavilion, they call it dream cube. People may find from its name, that there is strong connection between the building and DREAM.
Mary Gu, president of Shanghai corporate pavilion, said, "I think everybody's concern right now or issues in the society right now which is related to the corporate or industrial business is pollution, environmental issues. And what our responsibility is trying to make everybody's dream come true."
Making a dream come true is no easy job, especially the dream of a city to offer its people a better life. But expo has always been such a platform for people to experience new technology or invention, and even new life style. People wouldn't expected that we will have ice cream hundred years ago, if we hadn't the St. Louise Expo. We wouldn't have had light if we hadn't 1878 Paris Expo. There were numerous inventions happened in the expo telling people where our life should go to. In 2010, this may happen again.
Yung Ho Chang, principal architect of Shanghai corporate pavilion, said, "Expo is an event where we are really trying to look into the future. If we talk about inspiration for the architecture of the shanghai corporate pavilion I think really is the possibility to looking into the future through our design, what kind of life we may have in China or in shanghai maybe in the 50 years down the road."
What our life may look like in the future maybe a difficult question to answer. But dream cube made some try-outs.
Take plastic waste for example, each year china produces 140 million tons of plastic waste, only 25% of this waste is recycled. In shanghai, an estimated 30 million CDs are thrown away every year. These CDs can be recycled to produce polycarbonate pellets to manufacture new polycarbonate products. So the exterior fa?ade of the dream cube is exactly clad with polycarbonate tubes. The better thing is after the expo ends, the polycarbonate components of the pavilion can be completely recycled to reduce further wastes.
Mary Gu said, "There are 30 million recycled CDs being wasted every year in shanghai, so if we accumulate all of that, we probably have already accumulated all the construction material we need for the structure of our building."
