A PAEAN TO SUSTAINABILITY
Terra—The Sustainability Pavilion is a futuristic structure that revels in possibility rather than accepts limitations.
By Ben East
Expo 1889 introduced Paris’s iconic Eiffel Tower. Expo 1958 debuted the futuristic Atomium, its stainless steel spheres still a defining landmark of the Belgian capital. The stunning canopy of ultra-efficient photovoltaic cells that forms the shimmering paean to sustainability that is the Terra pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai could make a similar statement for the 21st century.
A statement not just about the UAE but about the world. Terra isn’t suggesting how buildings might be self sufficient in their energy and water use in the future, but a building that celebrates how that can be achieved now. And it does so via a structure and an experience which revel in how exciting, how beautiful this shift can be.
“If we can demonstrate a truly self-sustaining, net-zero pavilion in one of the most demanding environments on earth, that’s not just a great showcase of what is possible in the UAE, but it argues that there is no reason why other places can’t do this [too],” says architect Andrew Whalley, chairman of UK-based practice Grimshaw.
Terra is designed to meet both the highest LEED certification and Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge, where a structure must produce more energy than it consumes and offer net-positive water use and net-positive waste. With innovative bifacial solar
panels, additional power is generated by capturing light reflected from the floor; yet more is fed to Terra’s grid by elegant e-trees that rotate to harvest the sun. A Water Tree will trial the extraction of atmospheric humidity, aiming to produce up to 22,000 litres a year, while cutting-edge irrigation and grey water recycling means every drop of reusable water is captured.
Whalley is keen to stress that the aim was to create a deep connection with the wonder of the natural world. He wants to inspire visitors so that they come out of the experience with a sense of stewardship, and emotional and practical tools to foster change in their consumption. “I told the team that the building had to be legible, readable. So you look at Terra and you understand that this big roof is obviously harvesting energy. Even before anyone tells you how it works, you get a feel of what’s happening.
“The design analogy was a ghaf tree, the national tree of the UAE,” he says, noting Terra’s hollow central ‘stem’ and the sweep of its spectacular canopy enveloping everything underneath it. “The ghaf tree signals where there is water and offers a shaded meeting point. We needed to immerse people in the landscape of the UAE so that we could catch their imagination and start conversations about sustainability.”
Those conversations begin as soon as visitors walk through a wadi exploring the beauty and adaptability of the UAE landscape. The passively cooled courtyard under the canopy is full of interactive games that underscore the world’s precarious environmental position. But it’s the exhibition halls—partly buried in the ground to create a cooling thermal effect—exploring forest roots and ocean depths that really hit home. More movie than museum, particularly when visitors come across the “bad guy in the fairy tale”, as pavilion director John Bull puts it. That takes the form of a giant anglerfish and clanking, gnashing machines, as the Earth’s wonders are compromised.
Terra isn’t proposing that we will all live under an immense photovoltaic canopy. But, for instance, the work that engineers Buro Happold undertook on Terra’s energy budget—how much each element of the building could “spend” with its self-produced resources—is transferable. “The challenge for architects is to learn the lessons from Terra to interrogate how you would build something different, but geared up for the same outcome,” says Buro Happold’s Rob Cooke.
For the people who come to Terra, its visual language is crucial to the ethos of not just the building but Expo 2020 itself. “If we inspire just a small percentage of our millions of visitors to think about their relationship with the planet, to make even the smallest of changes or to talk about sustainability,” Bull says, “the cumulative effect would be humbling.”
TOP PHOTOGRAPH: GEORGINA CLARK; AERIAL: DANY EID / EXPO 2020
