The smell of soil, ferns, and wood. Entering the Austrian Pavilion at the EXPO is like being carried at a different latitude. Despite the crowd, the sensation is like walking around in an alpine forest. The air is fresh and moist, and sounds and perfumes create a perfect microclimate that invites you to sit on the long timber benches that encircle the pavilion, to relax in a cool atmosphere and to immerse into a fascinating experience, truly multisensory, which at the same time is a deep reasoning on the relationship between urban life and nature.
The Austrian pavilion design was selected after an international design competition and is designed by team.breathe.austria, a design team composed of multidisciplinary experts from the Technical University of Graz and the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU).
The exhibition depicts the concept of air as a metaphor for life and environmental quality, hence the name of the pavilion: breathe.austria. Thus, the 560 square meters of exhibition space of the pavilion is planted with typical Austrian flowers, bushes, and large trees that will evolve along their natural annual cycle for the entire duration of the EXPO.
To obtain the planned outcome, which requires very precise conditions for temperature, ventilation, shading, illumination, and humidity, an accurate climatic study has been carried out along with an inventive design of the pavilion, which expresses the most state-of-the-art solutions related to building technology, sustainability, and bio-climatic techniques.
TEAM.BREATHE.AUSTRIA
terrain: architects and landscape architects BDA – Klaus K. Loenhart
with
Agency in Biosphere – Markus Jeschaunig
Hohensinn Architektur ZT GmbH – Karlheinz Boiger
LANDLAB, i_a&l, TU Graz – Andreas Goritschnig und Bernhard König
Lendlabor Graz – Anna Resch und Lisa Maria Enzenhofer
and
Alexander Kellas
Engelmann Peters Engineers – Stefan Peters
transsolar – Wolfgang Kessling, Martin Engelhardt
BOKU Wien IBLB – Bernhard Scharf
Official site
http://breatheaustria.at/
Drawings and renderings © TEAM.BREATHE.AUSTRIA
Photos © Inexhibit. All rights reserved.