The Giant's Kettle at World Expo, Shanghai, China

Water and stone can combine in nature to form deep cavities, with circular sides worn perfectly smooth over millennia. This was the inspiration for Helsinki based Teemu Kurkela’s Finland pavilion design for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. The outside of the pavilion was clad with 25 000 specially designed tiles made from UPM ProFi’s recycled paper plastic composite. The stone look shingles formed a skin reminiscent of fish scales around the pavilion.

 

​UPM ProFi at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai

​The Finnish pavilion at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai received a modern shingle cladding made from UPM ProFi. Finland took part in the Expo with the Giant’s Kettle pavilion.

The innovative pavilion, which was built on a 3,000 square metre lot, stresses the importance of minimal environmental load in its material selection.

The surface area of the Giant’s Kettle’s exterior cladding is 3,700 square metres, for which UPM produced about 25,000 injection-moulded shingles. The size of each shingle is 350 x 600 mm.

The Jury of the Bureau International des Expositions, made up of well-known architects and urban designers, selected the Giant’s Kettle as the Best Pavillion in its size category.


​Kirnu Pavilion

The materials chosen for the innovative pavilion cause a minimal environmental burden.

Kirnu has been designed by the Helsinki-based architecture agency JKMM Architects, which won the architectural competition for the design of the pavilion in 2008.

The World Expo 2010 will be held in Shanghai between 1 May and 31 October 2010.

Tens of millions of people are expected to visit the over 300-hectare expo site during the six months it will be open.

About 20,000–30,000 people are expected to visit the Finnish pavilion every day.