Shanghai Expo 2010: architectural photographer Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre is at Shanghai Expo 2010 this week and will be sending us some of the first photos of the completed pavilions, starting with the Spanish Pavilion by Miralles Tagliabue (EMBT).

EMBT's pavilion has a wicker facade over a steel structure.

The Expo opens on 1 May and runs until 30 October.

All photographs are copyright Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre/View and are used with permission.

More from Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre at Shanghai Expo 2010 over the next few days.

Here's some text from EMBT's website:

“Only a few months following the opening ceremony for the International Exhibition in Zaragoza 2008, word has already come around of the Shanghai Expo 2010, which aims to be the greatest and most sustainable environmentally, but at the same time the most technological.

"In the hard task of making everything coexist, the pavilions will divide themselves between technological choices (…) and the sustainable ones, like the warped fabric made of steel and wicker of Spanish pavilion.

The Barcelonese studio Miralles Tagliabue (EMBT) won the public contest. 
The project proposed by EMBT consists on developing the handicraft technique of the wicker into a practice of construction. With this goal in mind, the universal language of the material works to build a bridge between East and West, and among Spain and China.

"With the volumetric, material, and structural inspirations of a wicker basket array, the void of the stands will mold a pavilion in which tubular metallic supports will sustain a wicker grid that will filter the light and function as a climatic membrane that wraps the pavilion.”

Text by Anatxu Zabalbeascoa, 
El Pais Babelia 03.11.07

Competition

Prize: Competition, jan 2007, First prize

Client: SEEI (Sociedad Estatal para Exposiciones Internacionales, S.A.)

Architects: Benedetta Tagliabue, Miralles Tagliabue EMBT

Collaborators: Makoto Fukuda, Salvador Gilabert , Guile Amadeu , Francesca Ciprini,Gabriele Rotelli, Gitte Kjaer, Michael González, Jan Kokol, Natalia Leone, Judith Plas, Mattia Cappelletti

Basic project 2007

Project directors: Makoto Fukuda, Salvador Gilabert

Collaborators: Gabriele Rotelli,Guile Amadeu, Francesca Ciprini, Mattia Cappelletti, Manuel Rearte, Johane Ronsholt, Kazuya Morita, Gian Mario Tonossi, Olivia Kostifa, Cesar Trujillo, Carles Pastor, Marta Martinez, Noelia Pickard

Executive projet 2008

Architects: Benedetta Tagliabue/Miralles Tagliabue EMBT

Project director: Salvador Gilabert, Igor Peraza (Architect on Site)

Collaborators: Guile Amadeu , Mattia Cappelletti, Vaiva Simoliunaite, Jack O'Kelly, Gabriele Rotelli, Giuseppe Maria Fanara, Stefan Geenen, Paola Lodi, Cristina Salvi, Mireia Soriano, Travis McCarra, Stefan Geenen, Lin Chia Ping, Lee Shun Chieh, Daniela Bortz, Barbara Asnaghi, Roberto Stefano Naboni, Carolina Carvalho, Maria Francesca Origa, Alessandra Deidda, Alice Puleo, Ailyn Alfaro, Jose Antonio Pavon, Armando Arteaga,Françoise Lempereur, Logan Yuen, Gordon Tannhauser, Xavier Ferrús, Fernanda Riotto Fernández, Paul Andrew Brogna, Ewa Pic, Christian Pamies, Susana Osés, Verena Vogler, Clara Nubiola, Maria Loucaidou, Virginia Chiapas, Sara Cuccu, Jorge Andrés Cantor, Luis Alejandro Vivas, Giovanni Cetto, Simona Covello, Diego Parra, Ermanno Marota, Guillermo Marcondes Zambrano, Guto Santos, Kirsti Øygarden, Luciana Cardoso, Marco Quagliantini, Michelangelo Pinto, Michele Buizza, Phuoc Tan Huynh