Pavilion for the Kingdom of Bahrain Expo 2020 Dubai / Christian Kerez
Pavilion for the Kingdom of Bahrain Expo 2020 Dubai / Christian Kerez
Text description provided by the architects. The pavilion in Dubai consists of a hall with a floorplan area of 900 m2 and a height of about 23 m. Columns and beams ordinarily articulate architectural space horizontally and vertically, but here the columns spread out unfathomably in all directions. They penetrate walls and ceilings and end outside the building. The placement of the windows and the window reveals in the thin perimeter planes is a pure consequence of the geometrical arrangement of the columns.
At the same time, this source of light forms the load-bearing and stiffens the connection between the surrounding walls and the columns. The slanted columns meet repeatedly in space and when they do, they are welded together. This drastically reduces their buckling length in relation to the actual dimensions of the space, which means that the room can be supported and stiffened solely by filigree standard steel profiles with a diameter of 11 cm. The walls are built with frames made of 14 cm thin U-profiles. Together, they work as one singular structural system.
While the thin columns seem extremely dense in overview, it is quite surprising how light and sparingly placed they appear, on walking through the built space. At first glance, the supporting structure deceptively looks as if it were evenly distributed throughout but vistas open up repeatedly across the entire expanse of the space. In addition, areas of densely spaced columns alternate with open areas that are completely free of supports.
The many open vistas throughout the hall are complemented by an infinite variety of additional views as the eye is repeatedly drawn up along the supports into the height and expanse of the room to the walls of the hall and beyond via the light slits. The frames of the enclosing walls are clad in thin, malleable aluminum panels, dissolving the boundaries into multiple reflections. The panels of the exterior cladding also reproduce the thin frame grid underneath through the reflections of the slightly cambered surfaces.
In most buildings, the support structure serves the sole purpose of shoring up the building, but in this case, it becomes a space-defining, architectural event and a spatial experience that cannot be readily deciphered. It is not illustrative. This unusual, futuristic, spatial effect does not refer explicitly to the Kingdom of Bahrain, but allows open fields of association, for example, the floor plan typologies of old palaces in Muharraq, their introverted living spaces, to the dense, irregular, traditional ornaments in Bahrain, but also to state-of-the-art technologies such as those used in Formula 1.
The Bahrain Authority of Culture and Antiquities, under the direction of H.E. Sheikha Mai Bint Mohammed Al-Khalifa and her director Noura Al Sayeh, relates this building to Anne Holtrop’s building for the World’s Fair in Milan, for they are convinced that architecture is not only important as an object-like symbol but above all that it should give visitors a unique architectural and spatial experience. This pavilion will be reconstructed in Manama, the modern business center of Bahrain, entirely in the spirit of sustainability.
