Expo: French Pavilion

Because geology has provided her with a wide variety of soils, France has a rich genetic heritage, adapted to local conditions, an essential resource to produce differently.

These soils have also created a cultural and gastronomic heritage of high quality. With its double feature, France can initiate new practices and a new attitude.

The project continues the theme of the Great Market. A hall, open to the city, a large roof and its shade, pillars that support the building and organise the exhibition, light, and a cool breath of air in the summer heat.

At the time of short circuit retails, it reinterprets the market model: once a place of exchange, tomorrow’s market will be a place of production to be consumed on the spot. Here we have the exhibition on the ground level, the consumption on the terrace and the production on facades and roof.

On the facades, the hops grow, on the terrace aromatic herbs, and in the restaurant, vegetables to be eaten on the spot, thanks to Hydroponic production. It is the image of a “fertile market”, in direct production-consumption system. And at the end, there will be a great event for the harvesting of hops.

Below the horizontal roof, the Great Market presents itself as a “reversed” and spectacular landscape that makes the buzz. A landscaped ceiling that evokes the French identity born from territories. The architecture expresses the four pillars that underpin the exhibition: “feed the world today, feed the world tomorrow, pleasure and food, commitment to the future”.

The project, all wood (structures, floors and facades), expresses the French expertise in timber frame, in its most innovative form: the free form. Assemblies are invisible, complex geometry is made of digital cutting.

French Pavilion, Expo Milano 2015
Architects: XTU Architectes
Contractors: C.M.C di Ravenna, Simonin
Client: FranceAgriMer
Area: 3.500 sqm