Gert Wingårdh’s Hello Pavilion is made of 11,000 paper sheets

Hello Pavilion | design Gert Wingårdh + Kustaa Saksi

The Hello Pavilion is a fascinating social space conceived by the Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh and the Finnish illustrator Kustaa Saksi for the 2013 edition of the Furniture & Light Fair in Stockholm. The 200-square-meter pavilion was intended as a communication space where lectures, seminars, and conferences were held.
What is truly impressive about this design is the capability of achieving an outstanding and “grand” appearance by adopting and repeating something humble like a paper sheet.
From this point of view, this project is a perfect example of real sustainability, intended as a design approach focused on obtaining the maximum result by using a reduced quantity of completely recyclable material.
Furthermore, in the case of the Hello pavilion, such intent leads to really powerful and iconic visual results, where 11,000 A3 sheets form a dome-like volume resembling a cathedral interior.

Hello Pavilion. Plan and elevation, copyright Wingårdhs

The paper sheets are arranged in 1,120 stacks, hung through wires to a suspended false ceiling; the bottom side of the lowest sheet of each stack carries a part of a gigantic image that acts similarly to the fresco paintings on a cathedral vault. To reinforce the allusion to the archetype of all communication places, below the paper dome a series of tables, constituted of reflecting laminate tops supported by a total of 70,000 A4 size paper sheets, are arranged like benches in a church and placed in front of an altar-like speakers’ podium.

The construction of the Hello Pavilion required absolute precision: the “dome” was almost completely assembled at the ground level and then raised up to its final position.

Hello Pavilion. Photos by Tord-Rickard Söderström, courtesy of Wingårdhs