In March 2009, construction began on the UK pavilion for the Shanghai Expo, and officials said some changes have been made to its original design.

The original design, known as the ‘Pavilion of Ideas,’ was a unique ‘light box,’ which would display 60,000 radiating pixels, each ending with a tiny light source that swung in the wind. At night, the pavilion would twinkle with a variety of light effects.

Now the ‘light box’ has been opened up. It looks like a huge gift box from the UK to China, said officials from the British Consulate-General in Shanghai. Inside the pavilion there will be an exhibition about ‘bringing nature back into the city.’

Simon Featherstone, the UK’s project director for the Expo, declined to reveal any more information on the new pavilion design and said it would give visitors a surprise. The design changes have nothing to do with the global financial crisis, he said.

From Heatherwick Studio:

‘The Pavilion of Ideas is a unique display device – an enclosure that throws out from all faces a mass of long, radiating cilia, each ending with a tiny light source. Their length means they gently sway in response to any wind movement.

These cilia, or staves, provide the Pavilion with its only means of support. It rests on its soft forest in an urban field, flanked by two ramped, embracing arms of grass, formed as ramparts under which an auditorium, exhibition space, café, shop and reception spaces are sited. The architecture eschews the need for significant concrete foundations and aims to use simple construction techniques to touch lightly on the site.

Above and peering into these spaces, the Pavilion flickers with patterns of light as it sends its messages, and those of its visitors, across the site. Each cilium terminates within the Pavilion – with another tiny light source. Inside, clustered together by the form of the structure, they create an enormous engulfing digital screen. This is how the British Pavilion’s content is expressed – outwardly as well as inwardly.’