Words by Herbert Wright

China

Architecture Tsinghua University + Studio Link-Arc.
Chief architect Yichen Lu
Area 4,400 sq m

In a field of pavilions competing for wow-factor, China knew it had to deliver that big time. It has pulled it off with a vast wavy roof covered with panels that evoke bamboo leaves, under which a luminous wheat field spreads. The pavilion is entered through a sunken garden, where perhaps a thousand flowers bloom, tellingly all neatly contained in dense banks.

The roof has something of the flow of Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Centre, and although it looks like wood, it is essentially a steel structure with wooden elements. Surprisingly, chipboard lines the gallery wall above the wheat field, which is also spanned by a bridge. The wheat is aluminium rods mounted with LEDs that create great waves of colour and even pictures to a stirring soundtrack.

It's a change from the projections so many pavilions have, but has a lot less resolution.

China projects a lot of soft power in this pavilion, with its 'Land of Hope' theme. But has it found confidence in Chinese architecture, so long in the shadow of Western trophy projects?

The architect here is Chinese but Yichen Lu actually heads up New York-based practice Studio Link-Arc, as well as teaching at Tsinghua.

He readily says that the pavilion was designed in New York (and that it cost half as much as Vanke's pavilion). Just as with the wheat field and the structural material, things begin to blur on closer examination...