This brilliant bristling structure is Thomas Heatherwick’s recently completed UK Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. The six-story high structure is studded with 60,000 translucent rods that act as fiber-optic filaments that channel sunlight into the pavilion’s interior. The filaments also contains the impetus to create living forests in the future — each 7.5 meter long “branch” contains seeds from the Millennium Seed Bank that will be given to China one the expo has run its course.
Thomas Heatherwick’s UK Pavilion bristles with a dynamic facade that gently flexes and shimmers with each passing breeze. The beautiful building envelope blurs the boundaries between architecture and animated sculpture, while the area surrounding the pavilion features a network of pedestrian walkways and a landscaped park area.