Shanghai's Italian Pavilion Competition

Scanned from L'Arca magazine, this is the 3rd place winner of the Italian pavilion Competition for Shanghai Expo 2010, which I thought looks like a better scheme than the 1st place winner.

The project is constructed around a shell, which is composed of a set of stratigraphic sheets evoking temporal succession, a metaphor for how Italian urban fabric was formed... Twenty sheets, the same number as there are Italian regions, with three "glass" stanchions placed between them and room to display Italian design on the inside, structure the pavilion's basic layout... The building is developed around a plaza-space, which is slowly revealed to visitors as they walk along the corridors constructed in the distorted space between the stanchions, like the streets of an old town centre in some Italian city leading to the carefully guarded hub or municipal square... The aim to respect and reflect the nature of its Chinese context means the Italian pavilion actually looks like a filtering structure open along the sides to allow people to see across to the other side of the river, where part of an old Shanghai neighborhood is still very much live.

Update: More can be found here