50th anniversary of the 1958 Universal World Exhibition at Brussels

Architects SHSH have assembled a giant temporary pavilion to pay homage to the 50th anniversary of the 1958 Universal World Exhibition at Brussels. The extraordinary pavilion has been built using the most usual ephemeral component, yellow beer crates, all 30,000 of which have been stacked to form an architectural form featuring columns, arches and even domes. It’s the use of effective lighting above everything else which lends the structure its golden appearance.
Located adjacent to the Atomium building where it is visible to the cars and pedestrians, the SHSH used beer crates because they would leave no waste and return to normal daily use once the structure would be dismantled following the exhibition. According to the designers, “We desired the contents of the pavilion to ask, 50 years later, what the notions of progress, universalism and happiness had brought in their time through the system of international exhibitions, and how could a ‘package’ building be enrolled in the parentage of an architectural solution that manages to convey the architectural questions of a given period in time.” Ultimately they chose to build a structure based on the notion of recycle, reuse which would also reduce the assembly time.