Photo credits: Instagram @michelenastasiphotography
#ExpoDubai: the Italian pavilion nominated for the Construction Week Awards.
Expo Dubai
Officially Expo 2020 Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is the event that should have taken place between October 2020 and March 2021. Due to the Covid19 pandemic, however, the event has been postponed for a year: it is in fact currently underway and is the first universal exhibition held in an Arab country.
The theme of the entire event is Connecting Minds, Creating the Future, a play on words that wanted to combine the desire to look intelligently to the future and the name of the site where all the exhibition, an area of about 150 hectares, called Al Wasl, which is the ancient name of Dubai, which means “the connection“.
Three sections come to life from this area, which mark the three thematic areas of the exhibition:
Mission Possible, the Opportunity area, whose pavilion was designed by AGi Architects, whose raison d’être is based on the great urban history of the same place where it stands and on its being a place of connection between people, even of age, different culture and languages.
Terra, the Sustainability area, a pavilion designed by a Grimshaw Architects, which allows you to take a journey through the problems that the Earth is facing and the related solutions that the sustainable architecture can provide to.
Alif, the Mobility area, whose pavilion designed by the award-winning Foster + Partners presents the largest passenger lift in the world, a 330-meter runway partly underground and partly outdoors, which highlights the harmony between the speed of technological progress and a healthy society in which goods and information are exchanged without restraints.
The Italian pavilion at Expo Dubai
Located between the Opportunity and Sustainability areas, in a strategic position also from the point of view of the flow of visitors, the Italian pavilion is making itself known, above all for having been able to perfectly intersect architecture and sustainability: the entire pavilion is reminiscent of a ship sailing the seas and many structural elements are made with recycled and recyclable material.
In fact, coffee grounds and orange peels were used in the building materials and to air-condition the rooms, a system was devised that involves misting, ventilation and shading to replace the air conditioning.
Crossing the threshold of the Pavilion, you travel inside the Italian natural beauty, as demonstrated by “Belvedere“, a domed structure entirely covered with wild herbs that recall the Renaissance gardens, and as well shown by a mammoth 3D printed replica of David by Michelangelo.
The Italian Pavilion nominated for the Construction Week Awards
The Italian pavilion is a project by Carlo Ratti, Italo Rota, Matteo Gatto and F&M Ingegneria and is a candidate in two categories for the Construction Week Awards, the prestigious award that takes place every year and which rewards individual, corporate and design excellence of the construction sector.
The two categories include Commercial Project of the Year and Innovative Project of the Year. Also in Nomination RAQ Contracting, the general contractor who built the Italian pavilion, in the Contractor of the Year category.
Final winners will be announced on 13h December at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel.
The Expo Dubai and the Construction Week Awards have brought the Italian construction sector back into the spotlight, which has already recovered in recent months, as well as enhanced the beauty of our country and the ability of its minds to know how to create with sagacity, bringing harmony and respect for materials and for Nature in every project.