UNITED KINGDOM

The UK Pavilion, which resembles a giant wooden conical musical instrument, was created by leading artist and designer Es Devlin. Also called ‘The Poem Pavilion’, it gathers the individual words each visitor is invited to submit, and uses an advanced machine learning algorithm to generate a cumulative collective poem – with a new poem generated every minute – which is displayed in both English and Arabic across the 20-metre-diameter façade, or “mouthpiece”. Devlin, who has been exploring the concept of machine generated poetry since 2016, collaborated on the design with structural engineers Atelier One, environmental design consultants Atelier Ten, executive architects Veretec, and the creative agency Avantgarde.

The pavilion’s eco-conscious construction uses crosslaminated timber, sourced from sustainably managed European forests in Austria and Italy. Inside the pavilion, the magnificent ‘Choral Space’ completes the artwork with the ambient sounds of a choral soundtrack, which melds the voices of multicultural choirs from across the UK. The overall concept was inspired by ‘Breakthrough Message’, physicist Stephen Hawking’s final project (before his death in 2018) which invited people from across the planet to create a common language to represent humanity – in the event that we ever encounter other advanced civilisations.