British artist Es Devlin conceptualised a giant 20-metre-high conical CLT structure for the UK Pavilion at the 2020 Dubai Expo – the first designed for the United Kingdom by a woman since the first Universal Exhibition in 1851.
The idea for Devlin’s interactive structure draws directly on one of Stephen Hawking’s final projects – a global competition launched in 2015, inviting people from all over the world to create a collective breakthrough message that they wanted our planet to communicate to other civilisations in space.
Project description
Devlin’s Poem Pavilion is shaped like a giant conical wooden musical instrument and consists of rows of protruding slats that – from a central point – extend outwards to form a circular façade.
Leading a predominantly female team and AI experts, Devlin imagined the pavilion as a kind of "collective poem" that is generated by an algorithm starting from words submitted by visitors, illuminated by LED lights and displayed in English and Arabic on the exterior façade. The algorithm was created with the help of poetry experts and "trained" on 15,000 poems by more than 100 British poets. Visitors can contribute a word through an online application on their phones.
Inside the pavilion, which is intended to look like the sounding board of a musical instrument, the visitor is immersed in a soundscape of choirs made up of the various ethnic groups in Britain. Devlin's aim is to draw attention to both the increasingly important role that algorithms play in everyday life and the cultural diversity of Britain.
"Algorithms are among us: they are an ever-growing part of our culture. Their outcome is based on what they are trained on and who trains them. The pavilion is at once an expression of the ideal of a culturally diverse Britain in which I grew up, tempered by our growing awareness of the role algorithms play in shaping the future of our culture," Devlin observed.
The structure was developed by Devlin in collaboration with structural engineers Atelier One, environmental design consultants Atelier Ten, executive architects Veretec and creative agency Avantgarde. Wood was chosen as the primary material for the installation with general contractor Pico relying on Rubner as the leading company in construction with this material.
Rubner Holzbau’s role in realising Poem Pavilion
The Rubner Holzbau team, based in Bressanone was engaged for more than a year in the realisation of the construction drawings, structural design of the connections, prefabrication, transport and assembly of the 165 prefabricated boxes of large dimension with a mixed structure of glulam, CLT and steel that form the 19 layers of the pavilion, together with the other parts of completion. In total, nearly 1,000m³ of glulam, CLT and multilayer wood panels were used in addition to 100 tons of special steel structures.
The very high structural geometric complexity had engaged the Bressanone team since the early stages of the project, and required close interaction with the design team and the other companies involved; a collaboration between Italy, England and Dubai made even more complex by the restrictions imposed on movement that, for most of the project, prevented the technicians from gathering around a table.
"The UK Pavilion, more than any other project in which I have been involved in over twenty years of activity, has been a continuous challenge for Rubner, from the first to the last day. The technical complexity, the difficulties linked to the climate of Dubai, the timing imposed by the Expo calendar: every time a challenge seemed to have been won, another one immediately presented itself. We even suffered the consequences of the ship running aground in the Suez Canal! In spite of everything, however, the pavilion was delivered on time and in the end everyone was fascinated by it," said Rubner Holzbau project manager Roberto Modena.
