The Hairy Cathedral of Shanghai

This is the Seed Cathedral. The British entrant for the world expo in Shanghai earlier this month. 60,000 rods of clear perspex are inserted into a large accessible, walkable structure, creating a shimmering, moving almost hairy building.
At night, LED's illuminate the structure, but by day the innards of the cathedral glow with natural light. Each one of the rods contains a different seed donated by the world seed bank, China.

The creators of the piece, Heatherwick Studio reports that the Seed Cathedral has already found favour with the Chinese public, who have nick-named the pavilion 'Pu Gong Ying', which translates as 'The Dandelion'. We are also glad to hear that the studio have planned for the afterlife of the pavilion when the World Expo ends.
"After the Expo, just as dandelion seeds are blown away and disperse on the breeze, the Seed Cathedral's 60,000 optic hairs, each one containing the huge potential of life, will be distributed across China and the UK to hundreds of schools as a special legacy of the UK Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo."

The UK Pavilion rather sensibly doesn't aim to compete with Asian high-tech solutions, but goes for a spectacular low-tech approach instead. Heatherwick Studio describe their approach as engaging "meaningfully with Shanghai Expo's theme, Better City, Better Life, and standing out from the anticipated trend for technology driven pavilions, filled with audio-visual content on screens, projections and speakers."

A full and very watchable description of the piece from designer Mark Heatherwick can be found here: iPlayer - Culture Show

But be quick, the interview is only available until Friday.

Heatherwick Studios