FRANCE PAVILION FOR MILAN EXPO 2015 DESIGN BY X-TU ARCHITECTS

FRANCE PAVILION FOR MILAN EXPO 2015 

DESIGN BY XTU ARCHITECTS

HERBS AND HOPS TO GROW OVER FRANCE’S PAVILION FOR MILAN EXPO 2015 
DESIGN BY XTU ARCHITECTS

Vegetables, herbs and hops will be planted between the latticed timber structure of the pavilion representing France at the World Expo 2015 in Milan.

Conceived by Paris studio XTU Architects, the competition-winning French pavilion design responds to the expo theme "Feeding the Planet. Energy for life." by proposing a building based around a vision of the market hall as a centre for agricultural production.

"At the time of short-circuit retail, [the project] reinterprets the market model – once a place of exchange, tomorrow's market will be a place of production to be consumed on the spot," said the design team.

Using digital fabrication techniques, cross-crossing layers of timber will give the building its ridged structure. Curved hollows will frame interior spaces, while the designers hope that vines of hops will grow up through the gaps in the lattice.

The ground floor of the pavilion will accommodate an exhibition centred around France's food production. Upstairs, a restaurant will attempt to serve vegetables grown on site using hydroponic processes and aromatic herbs planted on the terrace.

As a result of the various crops, XTU Architects imagines the underside of the undulating ceiling as an upside-down landscape that mimics the rolling hills of the French countryside.

"Below the horizontal roof, the Great Market presents itself as a 'reversed' and spectacular landscape that makes the buzz, a landscaped ceiling that evokes the French identity born from territories," said the studio.

The pavilion will be constructed by May 2015, in time for the opening of the expo. Towards the end of the exhibition, the pavilion will host a festival to celebrate the harvesting of the hops.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION FROM XTU ARCHITECT

ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPTS

A territory - building,
A fertile market

If the world wanted to eat like the West, several planets would be needed... Civilisation will need to evolve: it must produce and consume differently!

Because geology has provided her with a wide variety of soils, France has a rich genetic heritage, adapted to local conditions, an essential resource to produce differently! These soils have also created a cultural and gastronomic heritage of high quality. With its double feature, France can initiate new practices and a new attitude!

"The soil, fertile ground of the new food revolution."

To this slogan, we respond with a project that relates to the piece of territory.

The project continues the theme of the great market. A hall, open to the city, a large roof and its shade, pillars that support the building and organise the exhibition, light, and a cool breath of air in the summer heat!

At the time of short circuit retails, it reinterprets the market model: once a place of exchange, tomorrow's market will be a place of production to be consumed on the spot! Here we have the exhibition on the ground level, the consumption on the terrace and the production on facades and roofs.

On the facades, we grow hops, on the terrace aromatic herbs, and in the restaurant, vegetables to be eaten on the spot. Hydroponic production that depicts the French innovation in partnership with the world leader of the sector!

It is the image of a "fertile market", in direct production-consumption system. And at the end, there will be a great event for the harvesting of hops.

Below the horizontal roof, the Great Market presents itself as a "reversed" and spectacular landscape that makes the buzz... A landscaped ceiling that evokes the French identity born from territories. The architecture expresses the four pillars that underpin the exhibition: "feed the world today, feed the world tomorrow, pleasure and food, commitment to the future".

The project, all wood (structures, floors and facades), expresses the French expertise in timber frame, in its most "innovative" form: free forms. Assemblies are invisible, complex geometry is made of digital cutting, all technologies that the company controls, serving the architectural quality. It is spectacular, innovative, graphic. It is both elementary and founding. It is bare wood.

http://www.dezeen.com/2014/04/29/milan-expo-2015-xtu-architects-france-pavilion/
All the photographs copywriting  by XTU Architets

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

Photograph © XTU Architects 2014

XTU ARCHITECTS

ANOUK LEGENDRE & NICOLAS DESMEZIARES

Created in 2000 by Nicola Desmaziere and Anouk Legendre, XTU consists of 25 people gathering skills in architecture, urban planning, urban farming, design and research.

Part of an experiment dominated by public facilities, mainly academics and research, it has diversified in recent years in achieving housing projects and environmental projects and cultural museums in France and abroad.

XTU designed and constructed the Jeongok Prehistory Museum in South Korea, completed a study on the Maison des Civilisations et de l’Unité Réunionnaise (MCUR) in Reunion Island -the first energy positive museum in the Indian Ocean- and is now working on the design and construction of the Cité des civilisations du vin in Bordeaux. The agency is also laureate of the French Pavilion at the Expo Milano 2015.

Architectural posture is initially focused on the expression of architectural shapes carved echoing the urban context and landscape. The context is the founder, it generates the form, write in a minimalist and refined, inspired by abstract sculptors, futuristic willingly.

The experience of both museums, in very different climates and cultural contexts, was a ‘clash of cultures’ which reorientated the work of the two architects to a radical commitment in the environmental field.

Tropics, Asia, they bring back another way to architecture, using the elements, wind, water, shadow, alive.

The tandem also return a different way of seeing the world and the certainty that we must change lifestyles : the architecture have to anticipate the future !

Their long association with researchers then arises the idea of working in research and development, with a first draft ‘manifesto’ to ‘offshore’ city (X_seaty) working with the marine energies.

This leads to the concept of ‘biofaçades’ facades producing biological energy through photosynthesis, XTU is currently developing a biotechnology industry for the first positive energy tower of the Paris district of La Défense : BIO2.

These projects for the Department of Agriculture in Paris and the BIO2 tower, challenge the standards based on biotechnology and to make a living architectural entity which operates as a total ecosystem. We can speak of architecture ‘bionic’.

These bionic R&D projects were presented in 2010 in a solo exhibition at the Galerie d’Architecture in Paris and then in 2013/2014 in the exhibition of Archilab 2014 and the exhibition ‘Algocultures’ at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal.

Year 2013

‘L’Express’ considers the Cité des civilisations du vin as one of the 4 projets which are going to distinguish France.

‘Beaux-Arts Magazine’ selects Jeongok Prehistory Museum as one of the most surprising museums in the world.

Fresh city is considered as one of the 5 projects the most futuristic of Archilab.

http://www.x-tu.com/