Our aim was to create a Pavilion in witch visitor would experience the WALKABOUT concept, which is an initiation ritual of Australian aborigines that consists of walking without any fixed path, randomly. The project is characterized by a voronoi pattern creating a labyrinth like structure that gives visitor a flexibility in choosing the path rather than a generic maze.At first, when entering the lot, one passes through “buffer zone”, low-rise voronoi cells covered with grass layer for two main reasons: creating sitting space and establishing a microclimate around pavilion due to evaporation. Then one goes around medium-rise closed cells with semitransparent walls, which prepares the visitor for the exhibition space. Vegetation is inside cell space, which cools the surroundings and solves the drainage issues.
The exhibition and leisure spaces use several enlarged voronoi cells in the center area of the lot, however being apart from each other enhances the movement of people. On the ground floor are mainly exhibition and rest rooms. On the first floor, several cells are combined together to meet the need of restaurant, at the same time preserving the voronoi topology at ground level.The EXPO pavilion is a temporary structure, that is why the main materials are glulam and wood, which are quite sustainable and easy to recycle. The exhibition and leisure volumes are characterized by a vertical bended glulam structure that create regular size openings optimized for maximum shading performance. The walls merge continuously with the roof giving overall structural stability. We used transparent and opaque ETFE for the cover.
Project Credits
Project name: Walkabout
Team:
Catlabuga Octavian, Sean McLean, Federico Fauli.
School:
Politecnico di Milano
Faculty:
Faculty of Architecture and Society
Tutors:
Giuseppe Chiaranda, Alessandro Meda, Ingrid Paoletti, Beatrice Buffa, Ali Dinani, Carlo Gasparini, Roberto Naboni, Paola Tardini.
Year:
2nd Bsc
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