The Australian Pavilion, World Expo 2010
In 2009 we supplied wall-to-wall woven vinyl flooring for the Australian Pavilion at World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Six months and more than four million visitors later, the floor closed the expo without visible wear, and flooring became a line of its own for us.
The project at a glance
| Project | Australian Pavilion, World Expo 2010 |
|---|---|
| Location | Shanghai, China |
| Client | Australian Government pavilion programme |
| Pavilion architect | Wood Marsh |
| Our scope | Woven vinyl wall-to-wall flooring |
| Open | May to October 2010, six months |
| Footfall | More than four million people walked on the floor |
| Condition at close | No visible wear |
What a pavilion floor has to survive
A world expo pavilion is a building with a six-month life and a decade of traffic compressed into it. Queues form outside, visitors move through in waves, and the floor takes the whole day without a pause. There is no closed season for repairs and no second opening night.
Wall-to-wall woven vinyl suited that brief for three reasons. The surface is continuous, with the seams cold-welded rather than left as joints where soil collects. It wipes clean with a mop, so the overnight cleaning crew needs no carpet equipment. And the face is a woven textile on a vinyl build, so it reads as a floor rather than as a sheet good in the photographs that a national pavilion generates.
The pavilion drew 8.18 million visits over the expo, according to the Australian Government's own final report. More than four million people walked on the woven vinyl floor, and at the end of the six months it showed no visible wear.
Why this project matters to us
Flooring started as a request rather than a product line. Until 2009 we sold woven vinyl fabric, mainly for furniture, wallcovering and floormats, and the floor was somebody else's problem. Supplying the Australian Pavilion meant taking on the backing, the roll widths, the seam method and the installation sequence as well, and it turned flooring into a line of its own.
Everything that came after runs on the same logic: a woven face on a backing chosen for the traffic, cold-welded where the run is long enough to need it, and documented with the fire class, the impact figure and the fastness report before the sample is approved. We now take on more than 200 projects a year on that basis, in hospitality, offices, education, healthcare, retail and residential interiors.
The same construction today
The material has been through several revisions since 2010. What has not changed is the build: a 1.0 mm woven vinyl face on a 3.0 mm PVC foam backing, 4 mm total and 2,400 gsm, supplied in 200 cm rolls and cold-welded on site. The current figures for wear, impact noise and fire classification are on the product page and in the test reports.
Wall to Wall Flooring Choosing a contract floor Certificates and test reports
Sources DFAT, Shanghai World Expo 2010 Australian Pavilion final report (pavilion visits) Wood Marsh Architecture, Australian Pavilion (pavilion design) ArchitectureAU (contemporary review)
Photographs Images of the pavilion floor will be added here when the 2010 archive is digitised. Ask if you need a reference for a live project: contact.