Dragon dancers perform before a billboard featuring the China Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 yesterday to mark the beginning of its construction. - Shanghai Daily

Shanghai Daily news

World Expo Shanghai organizers unveiled a red, traditional design for the China Pavilion as construction on the structure started yesterday.

The design was chosen from 344 entries from all over the world. The final design was by a joint team from South China University of Technology and Tsinghua University.

The budget for the pavilion is about 1.5 billion yuan (US$203 million), Ding Hao, deputy director of the Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination, told the press conference after the kicking-off ceremony.

The structure is named "the Crown of the East" as its most distinct feature is its roof. It will be made of traditional dougong brackets, which were in use more than 2,000 years ago and are a feature of some buildings in the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace in Beijing.

The six-layer dougong roof, some 30-meters high, is the exhibition area of the Chinese national pavilion. The 20,000-square-meter exhibition will have the theme "Chinese wisdom in urban development" and will tell visitors about the Chinese values of harmony, nature and spirit.

The top of the roof features a nine plus nine or sudoku grid, which was a traditional urban planning feature in ancient Chinese cities such as Xi'an and Beijing.

Four 20-meter pillars supporting the roof rise from the top of the 13-meter-high provincial joint pavilions. The landscaping in the China Pavilion area will be in the Jiangnan-garden style, seen in cities such as Yangzhou or Suzhou, both in Jiangsu Province.

Environment and energy-saving strategies have also been considered in the design, said Dai Liu, president of the Expo Group. For example, the organizers are considering using solar-energy materials to cover the walls of provincial pavilions.

After the six-month Expo, the China Pavilion will become another landmark in Shanghai and host exhibitions featuring Chinese culture and history, said Dai.

The China Pavilion, covering an area of 6.52 hectares, is in the core area of the Expo site in Pudong.

It is the third permanent pavilion to have begun construction, following the Expo Center and the Expo theme pavilion. Work on the fourth, a performance center, will start next week.

The China Pavilion includes a national pavilion, a joint pavilion for provinces and cities and separate pavilions for Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Provinces and cities in the joint pavilion will have a 600-square-meter space.