EXPO 2015 focuses on food, basic energy of human activities and indispensable universal right. Brazilian agriculture pursues the desired harmony between growth and development with the mission to level the individual and collective welfare.
The way to reach this future of equality and to food right needs awareness of the necessary for connections based on resource sharing and dissemination of knowledge. A network that, unlike hierarchically organized structures, is flexible, fluid and widespread; its pluralistic character makes possible the natural coexistence in diversity, maintaining and enhancing the special groups and people who are involved.
New point of view about food resources and about cultural codes of Brazilian identity can grow through this network.
The idea becomes an invitation: be part of this big network and look to intimate relationship that connect distinctive cultural traits of a population and first raw.
The concept of the pavilion was developed merging scenography and architecture and starting from the metaphor of “future in network” that becomes the organizer elements of the space: a big net to access to the pavilion that invites you to know the big network of Brazilian agriculture.
The exhibition is not predetermined and leaves visitors different possibilities of access and use according to personal interests, but also according to the sensations of the moment.
The program of the exhibition of the pavilion and so its structure is divided into two parts: on the left side there is the most playful and permeable part, while on the right side there are the densest uses and technical areas.
The left side, from which you can enter the pavilion, is a gallery 115 mt long made of a series of corten steel portals with corten steel panels that overshadow the exhibition leaving it permeable to sight. On the right side, the principal area of the pavilion is a building with three floor and different kind of expositions and interactive areas.
You can enter Brazil through different points of the gallery and walk through a riverbed with a tropical greenery, you can admire native cultivations, you can smell intense perfumes and you can admire flowers and wood colours.
Visitors can also be captivated by the net and walk on it from the garden to the first or second floor of the pavilion, becoming part of Brazilian cultural twine. The net with its area of 1200 sqm leads visitors through the exposition of the typical Brazilian cultivations, changing its shape to show better some of them. More traditional and “technological” exhibition areas are inside the building, a “box” made of perfumed cork that light itself during the evening with a big smile of the skylight. So the pavilion develops an apparent dichotomy between open and close, artifice and nature. The choice to use corten steel for the structure is linked to the mineral wealth of the country and to its quick industrial and infrastructural development.
The connection with nature, forest, and the wise use of wealth respecting its balance are symbolized by the choice of cork, a natural material worked wisely respecting the cycles of plant growth.
The dichotomy is apparent: the concepts balance themselves, materials permeate themselves, corten tracks cork, cork envelops corten.

The structure of Brazilian pavilion is made of two parts: the body of the pavilion (made of S355j0 steel 70×20 m and 12 m high) and the gallery(made of s355j0w, 115x15m and 12 m high) divided into two parts by an earthquaking resistant joint, that is essential for a structure like this.
The first part of the gallery, before the earthquaking resistant joint, is a structure completely independent made of portals 5 m distant each other, whereas the second part of the gallery, beyond the joint, is supported by the building and it’s connected to it by means of a bolting system between pillars.
The portals are made of HEA300, connected by means of beams and bracing positioned on the wall and on the roof of the gallery, for a total of 175 tons of corten steel. It’s interesting to note that the steel used for the construction of the pavilion is almost made of a percentage of postconsumer recycled steel until 99%.
The structure of the building is completely realized with s355 steel elements, for a total of 433 tons about, made of a percentage of postconsumer recycled steel until 99% too.
The structural scheme of the building is principally made of HEA360 pillars, but there are also circular pillars 323,9 x 20 or cruciform ones made of two IPE 360.
Main beams are on east/west axis, and they are all IPE or HEA ACB elements, castellated beams with circular openings that allow a considerable saving in terms of material and at the same time they offer the possibility to host ducts plant, so that it isn’t necessary lowering the ceiling.
Considering the short timing for the construction of the pavilion castellated beams have been realized in a carpenters’ laboratory through an electro-welding system starting from steel plate and not through the traditional laser system process.
After this process beams have been subjected to load tests in order to test the maximum deformation according to the maximum load of project.
Secondary beams are IPE180 or HEA180 elements 10 m long in order to simplify transport, assembling and dismantling of the structure. Slabs are all realized with a dry system and with corrugated sheets 55 mm high and 7/10 mm thick, chipboard and fibercement. We decided to not use concrete for slabs in order to increase the sustainability of the project and in order to make easier the dismantling phase and the reuse of materials.
All the steel used for structure have been chosen for its performance, aesthetics and sustainability, but it also revealed unequivocal advantages: an assembling process that allowed a very quick construction and quality control.
Inside the gallery there is installed a particular walkable net completely hanging, where visitors can fluctuate over the exhibition of the gallery, in which there are different typical cultivations.
This net is made of an intersection of wire ropes, covered by polyamide and it’s completely hanging on corten steel structure of gallery.

The volume design of Brazilian pavilion allows a reduction of consumptions, both in energetic terms , both in hearth consumption terms, so that, needs for air conditioning, cooling, heating, ventilation and artificial lighting are concentrated, losses and pressure losses are reduced, the energy needs more efficiently calibrated for homogeneous zones.
One of fundamental aim of the projects to maximize the use of recycled materials, in order to reduce impacts due to extraction and processing virgin materials.
Materials and construction products selected during design period are made of recycled materials for 68% of total materials, exceeding the 50% requested by Expo.
Natural raw materials used for the project respect sustainable process for their production. Large part of exposition is characterized by wood coming from certified forest to counteract the sale of timber and timber products harvested illegally.
Such as for cork used as insulation and coating, that is 100% derived from renewable resources, and it’s 100% recyclable and reusable at the end of Expo. Dry construction system gives sufficient guarantees in terms of material recovery and possibility of reuse of them, reduction of waste and reduction of energy consumption in the process of construction and dismantling.
During design of this pavilion, following this philosophy, we thought to a second life for the building; it will be possible, after dismantling, create new buildings.

The principal aim designing Brazilian pavilion was sustainability, from construction to site restoration.
Sustainability is declined by recycling or reusing the materials used, in this case, for the construction of pavilion, but also, with greater ambition and foresight, reusing functional portions of a building to respond to needs of the community and generate a place of common opportunities on which the reuse project is based.
The pavilion will remain a symbolic building for Brazil and for Brazilian community in Italy; for this reason we evaluated to reuse different parts of the pavilion reinstalling them in Milan, thanks to enthusiastic support of the client.
Reusing part of pavilion would mean leaving something tangible to communities which have been involved in the exposition.
Brazilian pavilion was designed as a building that can be disassembled and reassembled, in order to rebuild entire functional portions in relation to the final use.
The client, supporting the project of reuse, is available to give the structure to Milan community, in order to link more to the biggest Brazilian community in Italy.
To concretize this opportunity we have already studied a project detail that, in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan, will allow installation of the first part of the gallery in a public park: the corten gallery with its playful net under which create a landscape of gardens, a place to offer different perspectives and contact with nature in an urban setting, a space manifold, open and secure and fully accessible safely.

The pavilion is defined, from an architectonic point of view, from two different element:
left side >>> gallery
right side >>> building
These elements are defined essentially by three materials: Corten steel, cork and wood.
Corten steel characterizes essentially the gallery that, with its corten grid, declines industriousness industrial and mineral wealth of Brazil.
Cork is the distinctive element of the building, covering it and making it a materic object that refers to natural tradition.
Corten “embraces” the building with enticement element , such as the basement or the shadow grid panels.
Wood creates a way that, with the succession of open/close, coverd/uncovered, connects spaces integrating architecture and design.
These three materials represent different manners to explain the theme of environmental sustainability, paying attention to different aspects: productive process, regeneration of first raw, recyclability, life cycle.