Polish folklore has designs on the Orient

Following their success in a competition held by the Polish Agency for Foreign Investment, architects Wojciech Kakowski, Marcin Mostafa and Natalia Paszkowska have appointed Buro Happold to help develop their design for a Polish Pavilion for Shanghai Expo 2010.

Inspired by Polish folklore, the outer layer of the pavilion will feature a number of inclined surfaces designed to resemble folded paper ‘cut out’ in a folk art design. The structure will contain an entrance hall consisting of an information centre, a restaurant and a shop, as well as a main exhibition, concert hall and open-air restaurant created within the fold of the building under the partial roof.

The challenging structure will be constructed in steel and the elevation finished in wood. The outer layer of the elevation will be made of impregnated laser-cut plywood. The inner walls of the structure will be mounted with semi-transparent teflon material membranes which will allow the exterior folk art designs to show through during the daytime.

At dusk the pavilion will be lit from the inside with different colour effects, which thanks to the semi transparent membranes, will be visible through the exterior cut-out patterns. The choice of materials and construction were to a large extent dictated by the idea that it could be recycled once EXPO has finished and reconstructed once again in a Polish city.

Buro Happold’s Andrzej Kolaczkowski who is working on the project says “This is a very challenging project for both the structure and building services engineers due to the sophisticated shape of the building, which hasn’t got a single perpendicular wall. Therefore we need to use CAD system working in 3D environment. In addition the summer climate in Shanghai will mean that we need to air-condition the structure; not only will we need to cool the air but also dry it, another issue altogether. The last challenge for our team is the visionary façade, which needs to be properly lit. The lighting solution must cope with the construction elements which in turn need to meet seismic requirement. It’s proving an excellent opportunity to work on such an interesting development”.

Project team:

Client: Polish Agency for Foreign Investment
Architect: Wojciech Kakowski, Marcin Mostafa and Natalia Paszkowska
Buro Happold services: Structural engineering, Facades, M&E engineering

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Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976. It offers civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, health and safety management, infrastructure and traffic engineering, ground engineering, façade engineering, fire engineering, computational fluid dynamics analysis, inclusive design consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services.