Milan Expo 2015: this trio of wooden pavilions was designed by Herzog & de Meuron to showcase the principles of the Slow Foods movement, which promotes regional gastronomy and a slow tempo of existence .
Swiss architect Jacques Herzog – a single of the original masterplanners of the Milan Expo 2015, prior to he and his collaborators walked off the task – was invited by Slow Meals founder Carlo Petrini to design the organisation’s exhibition area at the event.
Herzog noticed it as an opportunity to display what the Expo could have been under his path – a series of simple structures that are cheap and effortless to assemble, with a better focus on the exhibition than the architecture.
“As a lot as we have been convinced that our masterplan would be a good platform for the radical re-invention of what a world exhibition could be in the 21st century, we understood that the organisers would not undertake the needed actions to convince the participating nations to give up on their standard indulging in self-contemplation as an alternative of focusing on their specific contribution to agriculture and foods manufacturing,” said a statement from Herzog & de Meuron.
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“But Carlo Petrini has, considering that the beginning, been a single of the most striking and interesting figures concerned in the early preparing and had consequently been 1 of the factors of our very own involvement,” it added. “His radical intellectual and philosophical method to the concerns of biodiversity and meals manufacturing was the primary inspiration for our masterplan.”
Slow Foods was at first founded in Italy in the course of the 1980s. Its principal aim is to demonstrate the significance of knowing where various meals come from, and the result they have on the atmosphere.
This ties in with the theme for the 2015 Expo, Feeding the Planet, Vitality for Life, which aims to discover and seek options to the global concerns of food shortage and waste.
Found at the far finish of the Expo site, Herzog & de Meuron’s Slow Foods Pavilion comprises 3 basic wooden sheds, all of which provide shelter but due to their open sides are also exposed to the factors.
These frame a triangular courtyard furnished with huge planting boxes, each containing rows of vegetables and herbs.
According to Slow Food, they offer you an option to the “pompous and unsustainable structures that would only distract guests from the real objective of the event”.
The very first is made up of an exhibition inviting site visitors to discover about different food items, and the second is made up of tasting counters. The third is a room for talks and seminars.
“Our architectural and curatorial proposal is primarily based on a easy layout on tables which creates an ambiance of refectory and industry,” stated Herzog & de Meuron.
Photograph by Amy Frearson/Dezeen
“Men and women can watch visual statements and read through key texts about distinct consumption routines and their consequences for our planet, they can meet and talk about with exponents of sustainable agriculture and neighborhood foods production to understand about substitute approaches, and they can smell and taste the richness of agricultural and food biodiversity,” it added.
Highlights inside the exhibition shed include a enormous buddha made out of popcorn kernals and a series of boxes that ask visitors to guess their contents through touch and smell.
In accordance to Herzog & de Meuron, the lengthy and narrow structures had been inspired by the traditional farmhouses of Italy’s historic Lombardy region.
When the Expo is above, they will be disassembled and transported to a variety of Italian schools, exactly where they will be rebuilt and employed as backyard sheds.
Photography is by Marco Jetti, apart from in which otherwise indicated.
Site plan Dezeen
