Ribbon of Culture by EIGHT: John McAslan + Partners, Brisac Gonzalez, Carmody Groarke, Nord Architecture, Project Orange, Surface Architects, Wordsearch, Arup EIGHT, a multi-disciplinary design team led by John McAslan + Partners, has submitted a ‘Ribbon of Culture’, their proposals for the British Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Eight draws on the talents of five of Britain’s hottest young practices, supported by Arup and exhibition specialists, Wordsearch. The five young practices involved in the design are NORD Architects, Project Orange, Surface Architects, Carmody Groarke and Brisac Gonzalez. The British Pavilion is a journey. A sutra, as one of Eight’s architects put it, a treatise in the form of a rope or thread that holds things together – but not too tightly. The French philosopher Michel de Certeau put one aspect of journeying quite brilliantly in his book, The Practice of Everyday Life. Cities, he wrote, are strategic concepts, which only individuals could ‘walk into existence’. The British Pavilion, and its glimpses of British city life and the life of Shanghai beyond, is a walk into different existences, an expedition through our national experience of urban conditions – its history, culture and social and physical environments. The architecture is like a ribbon, or even a curling strip of cinematic celluloid. It’s a fluid experience, an urban mandala whose paths widen and narrow, touch and cross, offering changes of pace and perception. There are views and vantage points, outward to Shanghai, and inwards to the Pavilion’s central event space. As one of EIGHT’S architects put it, a container that need not contain.
