Belgium builds pavilion with 33000 beer crates

BRUSSELS: The Belgians love their beer, so it seems pretty natural for them to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Brussels World's Fair by building this incredible pavilion using recycled orange plastic beer crates.

Built in the shadow of The Atomium, the central symbol of the original event, the pavilion was designed by architects Shin Bogdan Hagiwara, Thierry Decuypere, and Jorn Aram Bihain to be a temporary structure, and after disassembly the crates will return to carting around bottles of Stella Artois.

The pavilion houses exhibits about The Atomium and World's Fair, but I think the beer crate pavilion is a pretty cool attraction all by itself.

To celebrate the Exhibition’s 50th anniversary, they built an entire structure with over 33,000 beer crates in 2008 in Brussels, Belgium next to the Atomium.

More than just a basic block pattern, the interior touts entire arches and domes. Using bright yellow plastic beer crates like bricks or any other building material, the architects were able to create a sophisticated design. It’s only upon second glance that one may ask himself, ‘are those really beer crates?’

On their website, SHSH says, “We desired the contents of the pavilion to ask, 50 years later, what the notions of progress, universalism and happiness had brought in their time through the system of international exhibitions, and how could a ‘package’ building be enrolled in the parentage of an architectural solution that manages to convey the architectural questions of a given period in time.

“Understanding that the sense of the temporary can only be truly successful when it is free of waste, the pavilion is built using an usual and ephemeral component which after the event returns to its normal daily use. This project was an exercise in how a common item can transcend itself and become architecture, rather than mere object or even mere building.”