The Water International Exhibition took place in Saragossa during the summer of 2008 requiring the creation of buildings to house the exhibition contents.
Thirst Pavilion, located in the Expo area named Thematic Plazas, whose mission was exposing the need of water by humankind and the consequences suffered by the environment for satisfying that need.
To reach that objective, it was considered as an enclosed building, a spherical segment of ø46 m in plan, having a height of 16 m, remembering a big morula, being composed its skin by a macro “porosity” reticule of reinforced fiberglass polyester sheets, being those “pores” filled by means of ETFE cushions.
The Pavilion had 82 ETFE cushions, having different dimensions all of them. It could be said that they have circular section, varying their diameter between 2.8 and 9.8 m, but maintaining rate sag – diameter of 0.15 for each layer of the cushion.
Upper and lower layers of each cushion had a thickness of 200 µm, being the external transparent and silvered the inner one. Due to the silvered coating, the sun rays were reflected, providing to the Pavilion an appearance of a set of water drops. Inside the cushions, led diodes were installed for night illumination, blue and white were the colours selected.
Owner: Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza
Project: Ruiz-Geli / Cloud 9 and Arenas & Asociados
Dome diameter: 46 m. Height: 16 m
Technical development & manufacture ETFE textiles: Lastra & Zorrilla
Arenas & Asociados’ Role: Detail Project developer
