Clover design signifies flowering of new era
Like the host city of Shanghai, world-famous for its mix of traditional Chinese and global culture, the main venue for the China International Import Expo also offers participants a similar feel, said the chief designer of the expo centre.
Entering the National Exhibition and Convention Centre (Shanghai), white magnolias, the city flower of Shanghai, are on prominent display as well as traditional Chinese ceilings, wooden sculptures, gardens in the traditional style, and the expo mascot Jinbao, a giant panda wearing a scarf, adds a welcoming touch.
“The convention centre has blended new and modern Chinese features,” said Fu Haicong, chief architect of the East China Architectural Design & Research Institute, a unit of the Chinese architecture firm Arcplus Group, responsible for the centre’s design.
The institute also designed one of the artificial islands that connect the world’s longest sea bridge, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge that opened last month.
“For example, the building looks like a four-leaf clover from a bird’seye view,” Fu said.
“In Western culture it is a rare variation of the common threeleaf clover and believed to bring
The building looks like a four-leaf clover from a bird’s-eye view. In Western culture it is a rare variation of the common three-leaf clover and believed to bring good luck.” FU HAICONG, CHIEF ARCHITECT OF THE EAST CHINA ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN & RESEARCH INSTITUTE
good luck. The shape of the building is also in line with Chinese architecture’s essence that seeks harmony and symmetry.”
The four-leaf clover has become a symbol of the centre, and it adorns signs, pavements, decorations and lightening.
The four leaves also point in four different directions and divide the building into four parts with the south square as the main entrance of the building featuring 24 columns, which refer to the 24 solar terms in the traditional Chinese calendar.
The form also has practical reasons. Efficiency is a major concern considering high land costs in Shanghai.
According to the requirements of the organisers, the building needed four exhibition areas, each 100,000 square metres, and its height is limited to 43 metres due to its vicinity to Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, which is only 5 kilometres away.
The design also had to take into consideration the terminal station of Metro Line 2, which sits right in the centre of the land, as well as the complex road and traffic conditions nearby.
Jointly developed by the Ministry of Commerce and the Shanghai municipal government, the fourleaf clover building has a gross floor area of 1.47 million square metres, almost 2.5 times that of the Shanghai Tower, the country’s tallest building and the secondhighest in the world.
In total, it contains 400,000 sq m for an indoor exhibition space together with 100,000 sq m outdoor space leading to the north square, and it is regarded as the world’s largest single block building for an exhibition, which makes it an ideal location for the expo, Fu said.
All of the centre’s 16 exhibition halls are huge — the 13 main halls are 28,000 sq m each and the other three are more than 30 metres high.
Since Shanghai was announced as the host of the expo last year, a more than 200-member team from the East China Architectural Design & Research Institute team worked against the clock on renovation to fulfill the goal of “making every corner of the exhibition as colourful as possible with Shanghai characteristics,” Fu said.