UK’s “Virtual Beehive” Pavilion at 2015 Expo Milan by Wolfgang Buttress

Under the theme “Grown in Britain”, the immersive UK's Pavilion designed by Nottingham-based sculptor and painter Wolfgang Buttress [toghether with the architecture firms BDP and Simmonds Studio], has built by Stage One and RISE. The project was chosen ahead of designers Barber & Osgerby and Paul Cocksedge, and architects Amanda Levete and Allford Hall Monaghan Morris. Now, the project is one of the first pavilions to complete for the 2015 Milan Expo.

The pavilion is part of the UK’s contribution, “BE,” the “virtual hive” designed to highlight the plight of the honeybee and offer an “immersive sensory experience” that leaves visitors with a “lasting flavor of the British landscape.”

The 1,910 square metre pavilion has been developed around a 14x14x14 metre 3D cuboid lattice structure, made from 169,300 pieces of aluminum and steel, the domed structure sits at the end of a meandering wildflower meadow that leads visitors to the “hive.” Once inside, a sensory composition of audio and visual effects will mimic the activity of an existing beehive in Nottingham.

The Pavilion consists of five main areas for visitors to experience: the Orchard; the Meadow; the Terrace; the Hive; the Architectural Programme.

Entrance to the “meadow experience” is gained via an earthy corridor of corten steel, open to the sky. The 40-metre long meadow will continually change as the plants grow over the six month Milan Expo period. Multiple paths and routes reference the orienteering “bee dance”, inviting the visitor to explore and participate in the development of their own journey towards the hive beyond.

Amphitheatre seating at the end of the meadow provides a perfect resting place to simply take in the experience, or to engage in the entertainment the UK Pavilion has to offer. The hive is raised to create a sheltered plaza area underneath. This allows visitors to pass beneath and to look up through the layers of the structure, glimpsing the movement of people within. People may seem like bees within a hive, and in this way the design plays with scales of perceptions.

CREDITS.-

UK Pavilion, Grown in Britain.- Shared Globally, Expo Milano 2015.
Artist and creative lead.- Wolfgang Buttress.
Pavilion manufacture and production.- Stage One.
Structural engineers.- Simmonds Studio Architecture.
Landscape architecture and environmental engineering.- BDP.
Physicist and bee expert.- Dr Martin Bencsik – Nottingham Trent University.
Area.- 1,910 sqm.