Slow Food and the architects Herzog & de Meuron have collaborated on the design and construction of the Slow Food Pavilion at Expo Milan 2015: Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life. Slow Food agrees with Herzog & de Meuron’s vision of focusing on the content of the exposition rather than on pompous and unsustainable structures that would only distract the visitors from the real purpose of the event. The pavilion will be at the Expo from May 1 to October 31.

Herzog & de Meuron studio has been commissioned to design this pavilion for Expo Milan 2015, within the master plan they designed. The pavilion is destined to show the positive aspects of the Slow Food movement, which aims to safeguard local biodiversity for sustainable agriculture and stockbreeding, allowing a balance of consumption worldwide. The pavilion stands out for its simplicity compared with the rest of the Expo pavilions. It is formed by three rectangular pieces entirely made of wood that form a triangular outdoor patio where terraces are located to cultivate, a way to create direct relationships with food, to appreciate its value and learn to avoid waste.

Description of the project by Herzog & de Meuron

When we quit our involvement in the further implementation and physical realization of our masterplan for Expo Milan 2015 we would never have thought to come back to that site with a real project. As much as we were convinced that our masterplan would be a good platform for the radical re-invention of what a world exhibition could be in the 21st century, we understood that the organizers would not undertake the necessary steps to convince the participating nations to give up on their conventional indulging in self-contemplation instead of focusing on their specific contribution to agriculture and food production.

Also we knew of Carlo Petrini's resistance to participate in a show that would rather give exposure to the big agro business companies than to his Slow Food movement. But Carlo Petrini has, since the beginning, been one of the most striking and interesting figures involved in the early planning and had therefore been one of the reasons of our own involvement. His radical intellectual and philosophical approach to the questions of biodiversity and food production was the main inspiration for our masterplan from where it could have inspired all national pavilions, public spaces and all other parts of the Expo.

We stopped working on the project in 2011 and to our big surprise started again in 2014 after having been invited by the organizers and after a phone call from Carlo Petrini who explained why he had decided to accept presenting Slow Food in a special pavilion, in a very interesting place within our masterplan of the exhibition. We had indeed always seen that place, a triangular piece of land at the very eastern end of the Expo's central boulevard, well-positioned to become one of the main public forums within our masterplan concept.

The pavilion should allow the visitors to discover the significance of agricultural and food biodiversity, to explore the variety of the products that are protagonists of biodiversity, and to become aware of the need of adopting new consumption habits.

Our architectural and curatorial proposal is based on a simple layout on tables which creates an atmosphere of refectory and market. People can watch visual statements and read key texts about different consumption habits and their consequences for our planet, they can meet and discuss with exponents of sustainable agriculture and local food production to learn about alternative approaches, and they can smell and taste the richness of agricultural and food biodiversity.

We designed three shacks, archaic, almost primitive wood structures that define the triangular space of an interior courtyard or market place. These shacks are long and slender buildings remindful of the Lombardian farm house the 'Cascina'. After the Expo they will be dismounted and reassembled as garden sheds in school gardens all over Italy mentored by Slow Food with their initiative 'Orto in condotta' as the principal national scholastic program for alimentary and environmental education.  

CREDITS.-

Architects.- Herzog & de Meuron.
Project.- Slow Food Pavilion, Expo Milan 2015.
Dates.- Project 2014, built 2015.
Location- Milan, Italy.

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Herzog & de Meuron Architekten is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog (born 1950), and Pierre de Meuron (born 1950), closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. They are perhaps best known for their conversion of the giant Bankside Power Station in London to the new home of the Tate Museum of Modern Art (2000). Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have been visiting professors at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 1994 (and in 1989) and professors at ETH Zürich since 1999. They are co-founders of the ETH Studio Basel – Contemporary City Institute, which started a research programme on processes of transformation in the urban domain.

Herzog & de Meuron is a partnership led by five Senior Partners – Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Christine Binswanger, Ascan Mergenthaler and Stefan Marbach. An international team of 38 Associates and about 362 collaborators.

Herzog & de Meuron received international attention very early in their career with the Blue House in Oberwil, Switzerland (1980); the Stone House in Tavole, Italy (1988); and the Apartment Building along a Party Wall in Basel (1988).  The firm’s breakthrough project was the Ricola Storage Building in Laufen, Switzerland (1987).  Renown in the United States came with Dominus Winery in Yountville, California (1998). The Goetz Collection, a Gallery for a Private Collection of Modern Art in Munich (1992), stands at the beginning of a series of internationally acclaimed museum buildings such as the Küppersmühle Museum for the Grothe Collection in Duisburg, Germany (1999). Their most recognized buildings include Prada Aoyama in Tokyo, Japan (2003); Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany (2005); the new Cottbus Library for the BTU Cottbus, Germany (2005); the National Stadium Beijing, the Main Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China; VitraHaus, a building to present Vitra’s “Home Collection“, Weil am Rhein, Germany (2010); and 1111 Lincoln Road, a multi-storey mixed-use structure for parking, retail, a restaurant and a private residence in Miami Beach, Florida, USA (2010), the Actelion Business Center in Allschwil/Basel, Switzerland (2010). In recent years, Herzog & de Meuron have also completed projects such as the New Hall for Messe Basel Switzerland (2013), the Ricola Kräuterzentrum in Laufen (2014), which is the seventh building in a series of collaborations with Ricola, with whom Herzog & de Meuron began to work in the 1980s; and the Naturbad Riehen (2014), a public natural swimming pool. In April 2014, the practice completed its first project in Brazil: the Arena do Morro in the neighbourhood of Mãe Luiza, Natal, is the pioneering project within the wider urban proposal “A Vision for Mãe Luiza”.

Herzog & de Meuron have completed 6 projects since the beginning of 2015: a new mountain station including a restaurant on top of the Chäserrugg (2262 metres above sea level) in Toggenburg, Switzerland; Helsinki Dreispitz, a residential development and archive in Münchenstein/Basel, Switzerland; Asklepios 8 – an office building on the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland; the Slow Food Pavilion for Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy; the new Bordeaux stadium, a 42’000 seat multifunctional stadium for Bordeaux, France; Miu Miu Aoyama, a 720 m² boutique for the Prada-owned brand located on Miyuki Street, across the road from Prada Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan.

In many projects the architects have worked together with artists, an eminent example of that practice being the collaboration with Rémy Zaugg, Thomas Ruff and with Michael Craig-Martin.

Professionally, the Herzog & de Meuron partnership has grown to become an office with over 120 people worldwide. In addition to their headquarters in Basel, they have offices in London, Munich and San Francisco. Herzog has explained, “We work in teams, but the teams are not permanent. We rearrange them as new projects begin. All of the work results from discussions between Pierre and me, as well as our other partners, Harry Gugger and Christine Binswanger. The work by various teams may involve many different talents to achieve the best results which is a final product called architecture by Herzog & de Meuron.”

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