Eventful six months for Swedish pavilion at World Expo in Shanghai

The 2010 World Expo in Shanghai has now been closed. The past six months have been eventful, not least for the architects at Sweco, who designed the Swedish pavilion.

Photo: Liu Shen-Chao

”We could never have imagined beforehand the kind of attention our work would attract. The very idea that around 20,000 per day have queued and visited the Swedish pavilion, looked at the architecture and wandered through the exhibit is mind-boggling,” says Eva Nygren, President of Sweco Sweden.

“I think that we have succeeded well with our design of the Swedish pavilion and realised the concept in every way. Sustainable urban development is an urgent issue that is manifested in the building through the meeting between the city, nature and mankind. The Swedish pavilion has been an excellent platform for demonstrating and describing the Swedish approach of using holistic total solutions for architecture, urban development and environmental engineering,” says  Johannes Tüll, Responsible Architect at Sweco.

Sweco has been active in China in recent years, above all in sustainable urban development, and the World Expo has naturally played an important role in promoting this business. It now appears that the pavilion will be staying in China, which is an added bonus.

”One of our underlying sustainability objectives from the start was to make it possible for the pavilion to be dismantled and reassembled in another location. It’s very satisfying to see that several Chinese parties are interested,” says Christer Stenmark, Project Manager at Sweco.

Sweco has carried out a number of activities at the Swedish pavilion in the past six months. Lectures have been held and hundreds of questions from around the world have been answered about the work that has been carried out. Sweco has also held a photo competition together with Tierrra Grande/Mattias Klum in connection with the World Expo.

The World Expo Shanghai opened on 1 May and closed on 31 October, at which time it had been visited by record number of more than 70 million people.