One of the 12 pavilions making up the Millennium Exhibition beneath the great roof of the O2 centre and dedicated to ‘community’. We linked up with BBC Blue Peter to launch a nationwide appeal to children to send in cardboard (5 postcard sized sheets) by second class post. The first 25,000 children were celebrated as the benefactors of the giant recycled building entirely made from their donations (with a steel ring beam and escalators!). The process to be reversed at the end of the exhibition when the building was pulped and turned into a postcard sized book that charted the fabrication of the building and included a paper kit model of the building.
A great collaboration with Stephen Spence (also ex RRP) with Shigeru Ban generously advising on paper construction, we transformed the donations into high-tensile paper that was used to construct the spiralling structure, with 10m to 20m high columns, clad in fireproof paper panels and ringed with curving horizontal paper tubes. Our research and collaboration with Shigeru Ban, who had proven the feasibility of paper-based structures, were instrumental in overcoming the challenges and reservations about a paper building under the dome. This project introduced families to the power of imaginative architecture and engineering to address the critical sustainability issues we all face.
Project images
Project images
