Monday, January 14, 2013

Seed Cathedral


The UK Pavilion was designed by Heatherwick Studio for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. The design of the pavilion was meant to be a direct manifestation of what it was exhibiting.






"The Seed Cathedral sits in the center of the UK Pavilion’s site, 20 meters in height, formed from 60,000 slender transparent fiber optic rods, each 7.5 meters long and each encasing one or more seeds at its tip. During the day, they draw daylight inwards to illuminate the interior. At night, light sources inside each rod allow the whole structure to glow. As the wind moves past, the building and its optic “hairs” gently move to create a dynamic effect."



The tips of the fiber optic filaments contain a vast array of embedded seeds from Kew Gardens’ Millennium Seedbank whose mission is to collect the seeds of 25% of the world’s plant species by 2020.

All photographs are copyright of © Daniele Mattioli.

All information and images referenced can be found here.





Amie Brink

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