Draw short listed for British Pavilion in Shanghai

4 Jun 2007

penny.lewis@carnyx.com

Draw Architects has been shortlisted to design the £10 million British Pavilion for World Expo 2010 in Shanghai for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) alongside five other practices; Zaha Hadid, Heatherwick Studio, John McAslan and Partners and Marks Barfield Architects. Draw will be working with Arup, DCM Studio and Graven Images ­on the project.

The shortlist was chosen from 47 entries that responded to a brief to produce a pavilion that highlights the UK¹s leading role in promoting policies and technologies for a low
carbon economy. The pavilion will have to deal with up to 40,000 visitors a day, over the six month expo. The teams will now work up conceptual ideas. A public exhibition of the six designs will be held in London and Shanghai this summer and the
winner entry will be selected in September.

Mark Bingham, the founder of Draw, believes that his extensive experience of working in the Far East including , helped to secure the firm a place on the shortlist. Bingham has 15 years experience working with Denton Corker Marshall, Terry Farrell & Partners and RMJM throughout Asia and Australia. He returned to the
with RMJM in 2001.

 Commenting on Draw¹s selection, Mark said how pleased he was to be given this opportunity as it fits clearly with the firm’s intention to take design from a Scottish context to new markets ­ and vice versa. He said: “I’m personally very excited by the challenge, because it taps into one of my own preoccupations: namely that the export and import of ideas is the only way for the Scottish design industry to sustain and deliver on the promise of this country’s high quality education system.”

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