About the pavilion


Architect
TERROIR

Building Consultant
Nordiq Group

Location
​Gammel Strand
Copenhagen

UIA-days
​July 2-6

Pavillon-days
​June 19-July 14

About the campaign

How do we build, design
and create sustainable
societies with plastics?

Plastic materials play a crucial and inevitable part in building,
creating and shaping a sustainable future.
With the Plastic Pavilion: Building Sustainable Societies,
we aim to demonstrate how.

At the same time, we aim to shed light on the trends,
cases and possibilities as well as the existing challenges
which drive innovation and change.

The campaign is initiated by The Danish Plastics Federation
(Plastindustrien) and made possible by our sponsors.

Plastic is a part of
the sustainable building industry of the future

The building industry is faced with a significant need to change as it must meet demands for greater absolute sustainability. A widespread misconception, based on intuition, emotion, and tradition, is that this can best be achieved alone by increased use of biogenic materials such as wood.

However, to meet future material demands, biomaterial supplies will likely not be sufficient, and all alternatives will have to be compared and considered. This should be based the factors relevant for sustainability, for example environmental data, life cycle analysis, life span, the possibility of using recycled content and/ or reusing or recycling the products.

With its diverse properties, plastic is a huge and inevitable part of today’s building industry. Plastic materials can be hard, soft, flexible, brittle, opaque, and transparent. They are durable, cost-effective, impermeable to water, formable, corrosion resistant, and low weight.

This makes plastic an ideal building material - and often also the most sustainable alternative to others.

Plastic Pavilion:
An SDG Pavilion part of
UIA 2023 Copenhagen

The Danish Plastics Federation won
a bid to erect an SDG-pavilion as a part of UIA 2023.

All SDG Pavilions are signature projects for
the World Capital of Architecture and
the UIA World Congress of Architect in Copenhagen.

The explorative constructions greet visitors on selected locations in Copenhagen,
like the city’s iconic harbor area, where Plastic Pavilion can be found.

Each pavilion is the result of a collaboration between architects,
engineers, material producers, science institutions, associations, and foundations, all working towards asking the right questions when it comes to building for the future, relating to one or more of the UN’s 17 SDGs. The SGD Pavilions try to provide answers to a palette of different challenges.

In accordance with the theme of the UIA World Congress
“Sustainable Futures – Leave No One Behind“,
all SGD Pavilions are designed to be accessible to everyone and are built with emphasis on responsible consumption of materials with plans for recycling, reassembly or reuse after the exhibition = their afterlife.

The project is presented by the Danish Association of Architects and the UIA World Congress of Architects Copenhagen in collaboration with the City of Copenhagen and CPH City and Port Development. The pavilions are created in relation to the World Congress, and present activities to congress guests and visitors throughout the summer to celebrate Copenhagen as the World Capital of
Architecture in 2023.

The World Congress of
Architects 2023

The UIA World Congress of Architects in Copenhagen 2023 is the world’s largest event on Sustainable Architecture. The International Union of Architects UIA organizes the congress every three years.

Approximately 8-12,000 professionals from Danish and international architectural companies, real estate developers, and commercial investors are expected to attend along with renowned scientists from all over the world, highly motivated students, NGOs and politicians, all attending to widen their horizons, discuss new products, learn – and network.