The Burnham Pavilions

Both pavillions are intended to echo the audacity of the 1909 Burnham Plan, which proclaimed, “What we as a people decide to do in the public interest we can and surely will bring to pass.”

The Burnham Pavilions
Design Team: Ben van Berkel of UNStudio, Zaha Hadid Architects
Location: Millennium Park, Chicago
Cost: USD $500,000 each pavillion
When to visit: 19th June - 31st Oct 2009

The Burnham Plan Centennial Committee has unveiled designs for two temporary pavilions that will be installed this June in Millennium Park, symbolizing the forward-looking agenda of the 220 organizations commemorating this year’s 100th anniversary of the Plan of Chicago. These two pavilions for the Chicago’s Millenium Park are designed by Ben Van Berkel of UNStudio & Zaha Hadid of Zaha Hadid Architects.

Pavillion by UNStudio





The sculptural UNStudio pavilion is highly accessible and functions as an urban activator. Framed by Lake Michigan on one side and Michigan Avenue on the other, it relates to diverse city-contexts and scales. The edges of the roof are parallel, but toward the center there is more complexity in the form.

At night, UNStudio’s pavilion becomes a responsive architecture with LED lights that change color and pattern. These lights will be in constant flux as the number of visitors to the pavilion changes. Programmatically the pavilion invites people to gather, walk around and through the space—to explore and observe. It’s sculptural form and reactive lights will spark curiosity and wonder in its visitors.

The UNStudio pavilion is made of steel, clad in plywood, and is covered in high-gloss white paint to reflect the city and pavilion visitors. It will be built of steel donated by Chicago-based ArcelorMittal, and after October 31 will be de-constructed and recycled.

Pavilion by Zaha Hadid




Zaha Hadid’s pavilion is a tent-like structure made of light weight aluminum and dressed in a tensile fabric. The exterior skin rises and falls along its aluminum ribs—the lines for which were derived from the diagonal lines and avenues in Burnham and Bennett’s 1909 Plan. Louvers in the pavilion’s ceiling will bring an interplay of light and shadow into the space as the sun changes position during the day. Exterior lighting will highlight the pavilion at night.

The interior of the Hadid Pavilion will serve as a screen for an immersive video installation created by UIC-trained and London-based artist Thomas Gray for The Gray Circle. This film will tell the story of Chicago’s transformation, including visions for Chicago’s future by local architects. The pavilion envelops visitors in its sinuous form, but the addition of Gray’s film leads to an even more engaging experience. This pavilion and video exhibition will inspire public discourse about the history and future of Chicago.

The aluminum structure for this fabric pavilion was donated by Marmon/Keystone Corporation, a member of The Marmon Group of companies. The Pavilion can be dismantled and re-installed in another location.

via The Burnham Plan | UNStudio | Zaha Hadid Architects

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The City Of Man

The design was inspired by a traditional Shanghai game, Imbrighi said. In the game, children drop a batch of 20 to 30 sticks on a table and try to move one stick at a time without moving the others until all the sticks are cleared.

Italian Pavilion | Shanghai Expo 2010
Design team: Giampaolo Imbrighi, Iodice Architetti (Teresa Crescenzi, Antonello De Bonis, Cosimo Dominelli, Francesco Iodice, Giuseppe Iodici and Marcello Silvestre)
Location: between Nanpu Bridge and Lupu Bridge along both sides of the Huangpu River, Shanghai.
When to visit: May 1 to Oct 31, 2010

The Italian Pavilion of Architect Imbrighi – selected among 65 proposals, on one hand, to represent Italian cultural values in contemporary terms and, on the other hand, to advance original solutions both on the technological level, to comply with the imperative of eco-compatibility, and on the structural level, to meet the need – if necessary – to dismount it and to rebuild it on a reduced scale in another area of the city.

The pavilion, called The City of Man, is composed of 20 functional modules that covers a 3,600 sq. m. square layout building, 18 m high, divided in several irregular bodies of different sizes, connected by steel bridge structures that allow to see the connection balconies.

The building is decorated on three sides by a film of water that reflects the structure highlighting the natural shinny effects. The brilliance of the structure is reproduced inside both via slits which evoke the narrow alleys between the city buildings, and also thanks to the use of transparent cement, a new, recently created multifaceted material. Because of its particular and diverse component on the different sides of the building, this material generates a twofold architectural effect, from the outside a nocturnal effect of the liveliness inside, and from the inside, the outside daylight atmosphere. The surface of the pavilion will appear transparent with the sides made up of self-cleaning glass.



The photovoltaic elements integrated in the glass of external covers shall guarantee a screening effect against radiations, while the lighting project of the building is not only aimed to scan the spaces, but also to favour energy saving.




The different sections of the building make up a geometrical variety symbolizing the tradition and regional customs which define the Italian identity: a type of mosaic of which each of the parts show a single picture. The form also highlights the topographic complexity of Italian cities, with its numerous short narrow roads and alleys which suddenly open onto a large square, a characteristic which can also be found in the traditional Chinese urban centres. A psycho physical effect of comfort is given by an internal garden, the presence of water and natural light which spreads throughout the area across the patios and by the walls.





via Shanghai Expo | Iodice Architetti

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Barcelona Pavilion 1929

The Barcelona Pavilion was designed to represent Germany’s "openness, liberality, modernity and internationalism…we do not want anything but clarity, simplicity and honesty..."

Barcelona Pavilion
Design Team: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Location: Av. Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia 7, Parc de Montjuïc
When to visit: From monday to sunday: 10:00 to 20:00 h. The Pavilion may occasionally be closed to the public or access may be restricted. Do check their website first.

The Barcelona Pavilion, a work emblematic of the Modern Movement, has been exhaustively studied and interpreted as well as having inspired the oeuvre of several generations of architects. It was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) as the German national pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition, held on Montjuïc. Built from glass, travertine and different kinds of marble, the Pavilion was conceived to accommodate the official reception presided over by King Alphonso XIII of Spain along with the German authorities.

After the closure of the Exhibition, the Pavilion was disassembled in 1930 when the Germany's Goverment failed to find a buyer. As time went by, it became a key point of reference not only in Mies van der Rohe's own career but also in twentieth-century architecture as a whole. Given the significance and reputation of the Pavilion, thoughts turned towards its possible reconstruction.


In 1980 Oriol Bohigas, as head of the Urban Planning Department at the Barcelona City Council, set the project in motion, designating architects Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Cristian Cirici and Fernando Ramos to research, design and supervise the reconstruction of the Pavilion.


Work began in 1983 and the new building was opened on its original site in 1986.







The pavillion itself has no real function. The plan is asymmetric and fluid with a continuous flow of space. Wall partitions are made of both transparent and opaque glass as well as highly polished marble. The low flat roof is supported by delicate metal supports. As has often been noted, the building has a kind of classical serenity.


Despite its apparently simple rectangular plan, there are almost no corners in the building, or anything that might suggest you are in a box. The generous canopy roof, walls that stop well short of abutting one another, and the floor-to-ceiling glazing break down the distinction between inside and outside. Even the doors are in the form of two halves of an all-glass wall, which rotate about a pivot in the floor and ceiling a few inches from the edge: the result is that when opened through ninety degrees each door becomes just another freestanding, parallel glass plane in keeping with the other planes defining the spaces in the building.






The materials
Glass, steel and four different kinds of marble (Roman travertine, green Alpine marble, ancient green marble from Greece and golden onyx from the Atlas Mountains) were used for the reconstruction, all of the same characteristics and provenance as the ones originally employed by Mies in 1929.


Mies van der Rohe's originality in the use of materials lay not so much in novelty as in the ideal of modernity they expressed through the rigour of their geometry, the precision of the pieces and the clarity of their assembly.






The Barcelona chair
Mies van der Rohe designed a chair, especially for the Pavilion, consisting of a leather upholstered metallic profile that over the years has become an icon of modern design. To such an extent, in fact, that the Barcelona chair is still manufactured and marketed today.





Georg Kolbe's sculpture
The sculpture is a bronze reproduction of the piece entitled Alba (Dawn) by Georg Kolbe, a contemporary of Mies van der Rohe's. Masterfully placed at one end of the small pond, the sculpture is reflected not only in the water but also in the marble and glass, thereby creating the sensation that it is multiplied in space, while its curves contrast with the geometrical purity of the building.

Photo credits: © Pepo Segura – Fundació Mies van der Rohe
via The Fundació Mies van der Rohe

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