Spanish pavilion in the world exhibition in Milan

THE PROJECT

Expo 2015 is intended, under the motto “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”, to show how different countries are focusing the quest for “a concrete answer to a vital need: being able to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone, while respecting the Planet and its equilibrium.” In the case of the Spanish Pavilion, the designer’s proposal was to produce a building evoking a greenhouse where Mediterranean alimentary traditions and new ways are shown in a live manner.

THE SOLUTIONS

Cross laminated timber was a natural choice to solve the time schedule issue: both from the point of view of erection time, and structural calculation and detailing time. The easiness for creating rigid boxes quickly erected was the key to manage lateral stability, which do not rely on the frames themselves, but on the CLT boxes.

END OF LIFE CONSIDERATIONS

The proposal to build a foundation easy to be dismantled, was solved with an unusual timber slabs method. Timber foundations have a well established tradition in the field of structural design, and the use of crossed layers of timbers was indeed used, at least until the XVIIIth century, when setting foundations on poor soils. Hence, CLT is a “natural” XXIth century evolution of the same concept. As long as the building will have a short life, durability is not an issue, and buried slabs over compacted soils were proposed. Finally, heavy rain related problems lead us to a relatively slender concrete layer instead of the compacted soil, and earth ballast was substituted by anchoring the KLH slab to the concrete. Anyhow, the main concept was still working, and the foundation was settled within two weeks after the excavation. Just two month more were requested to erect all the boxes above ground level slab.