Award-winning international architects Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel recently unveiled their designs for two eco-pavilions that will be the centerpieces of Burnham Plan Centennial celebrations this summer in Chicago. Both pavilions emphasize the importance of boldly imagining a better future for all, as Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett did in 1909 in their Plan of Chicago. So how can something that is disposable and temporary really be sustainable? Inhabitat wondered the same thing. So we called the organizers and they were more than happy to explain.
Hadid’s curvilinear pavilion will be constructed out of fabric stretched over an aluminum frame. The tent-like form has been designed to be collapsable and easily re-installed. The goal is that after its debut in Chicago, the Hadid pavilion will travel to other locations such as a university or maybe even the Olympic Games in London. We’re not sure who will have to cover the carbon cost of the Hadid pavilion’s globe-trotting but that might be nitpicking!
As for Van Berkel‘s design, it is crafted out of a variety of materials including steel and wood. Again, while the materials themselves may not be of sustainable provenance, the structure is designed to be deconstructed and recycled. According to construction partners Third Coast Construction and the Creative Collective, the materials from van Berkel’s pavilion will go to the Reuse People.
The organizers are working hard to ensure that the materials will survive as part of a public art project. When they start installing the pavilions this summer, over 3000 sf of screening fabric will go up around the site. This fabric will be recycled instead of being discarded, going on to become reusable tote bags for the citizens of Chicago. Although each architect’s use of “recyclable” but not recycled material could have been greener, we certainly approve of the thought and future-forward planning that is going into each pavilion.
+ Burnham Plan Centennial
Dear Inhabitat and Zaha Hadid,
This is a highly anti-environmental design and structure.
It has little-if-anything to do with the “nice effort” on using recycled materials.
The above is an unqualified statment of fact, against which there exists no valid reply.
Q 1: if we built a highly-polluting auto using 100% recycled materials, would that also be touted as being “eco-friendly” (environmentally sound and ecologically compatible)?
In fact, the “Chicago Eco-Pavilion by Zaha Hadid Unveiled” will:
(i) create enormous amounts of pollution throughout its lifespan, and
(ii) will require that even more pollution be generated in perpetuity to support it.
Please try in the future to be (at least) minimally accurate. This may require that you learn what “the environment” actually is, how it works, and how its functions are being subverted by such unsound “Hollywood Hype” publishing, touting anti-environmental products to the uneducated masses as being “green built” or “environmentally friendly.” [hint: the cycle of water = "the river of life", as has been known since time immemorial.]
Q 2: How is it that even ancient cultures knew more about the environment than does Inhabitat?
mit freundlichen grüßen / with kind regards,
mark rector
dir, env. prod. dev.