China Pavilion: Oriental Crown

After the construction slightly over a period of over 2 years， the 160，000-m2 China Pavilion for 2010 Shanghai World Expo was unveiled on February 8， 2010 in Pudong， Shanghai.

Yao Jianping， a project manager with Shanghai Jiangong Corporation， was in charge of the construction of the pavilion. He told us that the China Pavilion had no official name yet. Finding a name for the structure was not his responsibility， he went on to explain. His was to build a fine building. He admitted that he had been under great pressure.

When the first pile was hammered down in December， 2007， the construction team knew only three things were sure about the China Pavilion. The construction project would cover an area of 160，000 m2 instead of the 100，000 m2 as indicated on the construction contract; all the technical information available to them was in a thin booklet of design synopsis; and they didn’t have a single drawing.

They were pressed for time and they had a lot to worry.

The 69-meter-tall giant pavilion would have two stories underground and five stories above the ground with a total floor space of 43，904 square meters. It would consist of four reinforced concrete columns and a steel core tube， between which would be the cantilevered steel structure with the ground height of 35 meters， covering an area of 19，600m2.

Under normal circumstances， such a structure takes three years to build. But for Yao and his team， they had only 24 months. The construction started on December 18， 2007. The first red decoration plate was installed onto the exterior wall on May 25， 2009. The steel-structure roof was sealed off on December 28， 2009. The following five months were left for exhibition unit and management team.

The construction was demanding and huge. The groundwork equaled to eight football pitches. The whole pit was 8 meters deep and 2，920 piles were driven in. The most perilous part of the construction was the 250-meter-long western edge of the groundwork. It was only 20 centimeters from the ceiling of number 8 subway in normal daily operation. The groundwork must be safe enough to ensure that the 20，000-ton steel structure and other weights would not crush on the subway.

Yao Jianping’s second major challenge was to find a red color for the upper structure of the China Pavilion. The structure has two Chinese elements: the 56 brackets representing the country’s 56 nationalities and the color called China Red. The original color design given to Yao Jian was minimal: a raft of lines in a complicated structure and a group of physical data. Yao Jianping and the designers knew that what appeared on drawings and in computerized colors would not smoothly translate into reality. China had never had such a huge red structure before.

The designers had recommended a sort of glaze red applied onto a glass wall material. The sample was provided by a Guangdong manufacturer. The installed color sample looked dull. Moreover， glass wall is a hard material to install. The designers admitted the idea would not work.

On a larger trial scale， a huge aluminum plate was painted red and put up together with a 140-meter-long beam. The effect looked monotonous. It now occurred to engineers that they needed a surface that was not smooth since a smooth surface would surely produce monotony. They spent a month testing various materials and another month trying to figure out appropriate surfaces. During that period， the managers， designers and engineers examined dozens of color samples and compared their colors every day. They discussed so much day in and day out that Yao Jianping later described how they finally found the right color: the final solution did not come from eyes and experiments and tests. It materialized out of verbal discussions.

One day Yao Jianping spotted an aluminum plate in a pile of waste materials in a factory. The surface texture looked like a corduroy fabric. The result was very encouraging. Top leaders of Shanghai Municipality didn’t voice their objection after examining the larger color sample made on the corduroy surface.

With the solution to the surface texture found， Yao’s next question was what China Red was. He discovered to his big surprise that there had never been a color officially called China Red.

Song Jianming， a professor with Hangzhou-based China Academy of Art， had studied colors for nearly thirty years. After he finished his visit to another pavilion site nearby one day， the professor came over to the China Pavilion site and chatted with Yao Jianping. The professor explained that the color scheme used in the Forbidden City took sunshine and shadow and many other factors into consideration and that the result looks deceptively and wonderfully uniform. The Forbidden City has a number of red colors for different parts of the palaces and the compound so that the holistic effect looks in balance in all weather conditions and from various angles， directions and distances. According to the professor， if the reds used on the royal palaces in Beijing can be called China Red， then China Red is actually a combination of different red colors.

Song and other experts at China Academy of Art in Hangzhou were officially engaged to come up with a solution. Song jokingly called the expert panel a group of men after colors (color and sex are homonyms in Chinese). Officially they called their pursuit a journey in search of reds (well， that added a touch of revolution). Pretty soon， formulas and sealed samples were sent to Shanghai. Yao Jianping and his team test-produced large samples and sent them back to Hangzhou for evaluation and approval. In the end， seven reds were adopted， four for the exterior and three for the interior.

On July 31， 2009， all the aluminum plates were installed to the exterior. The color looks royal and solemn and eye-catching. It is unanimously agreed that the red looks perfect on the China Pavilion. Yao Jianping hopes the China Pavilion is the final word on China Red.

The China Pavilion has other features that can be topics for lengthy discussions and even lectures. For example， there are Chinese hieroglyphic characters on the walls of the pavilion that indicate directions; there are the names of 24 solar terms written in Chinese hieroglyphic characters on the gray surrounding wall of the regional museum in the close neighborhood of the pavilion. All these characters are written in seal script which is more than 2，000 years old. There can be interesting discussions about the ideas in the hieroglyphic shapes. Take the grey granite stones used in the 76 steps that lead from the ground to the door of the pavilion. How many stones are there? Who were these stonemasons? What special technical skills and requirements were used? How many months had elapsed before the contractor found qualified stone masons? Long and fascinating stories can be told about them. For the sake of space here， let’s omit them and talk about what will be inside.

In short， the pavilion will feature a movie， a long scroll of painting， a green area， an experience， and a bit of enlightenment.

The journey through the Chinese National Pavilion starts on the top floor. Visitors can either take elevators to the top or take the flight of 76 steps on foot. On the top floor， an eight-minute movie in a poetic style will introduce visitors to the unprecedented process of urbanization in China over the past 30 years since the policy of reform and opening up， to the Chinese people’s zest to build up our motherland and people’s vision of the future.

Visitors will view an animated modern version of “Along the River on the Qing Festival”， a breathtaking panorama of Kaifeng， the capital of the northern Song Dynasty presumably created by artist Zhang Zeduan (1085-1145). The Pavilion version of the ancient painting is 100 meters long. In the animated version to be screened on the wall of the top floor， about 600 characters in the painting move around and this part of the city looks real as the day brightens up and darkens from sunrise to sunset.

The “green area” on the second floor portrays not only the harmony between man and nature in cities but also a nationwide strategy for integrating rural and urban development.

An exciting cable car ride will take visitors on a 10-minute trip along an elevated zigzag rail through the green area. Visitors will see examples of traditional Chinese courtyards， houses of bricks and tiles， gardens and stone bridges often seen in the south of the Yangtze River， and several wooden structures， which are a special feature in China’s traditional construction.

The enlightenment is designed to wrap up the visit at the ground floor: a low-carbon future is a modern pursuit of a natural way of life. □