Seed Cathedral

UK pavilion at Expo 2010

The UK pavilion at Expo 2010, colloquially known as the Seed Cathedral, was a sculptural structure built for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai by a nine-member conglomerate of British business and government resources directed by designer Thomas Heatherwick. Referencing the race to save plant seeds from round the world in banks, it housed 250,000 seeds at the ends of 60,000 acrylic fibre-optic filaments which projected both outside and inside the building.

Seed

In botany, a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo and stored nutrients in a protective coat called a testa. More generally, the term seed means anything that can be sown, which may include seed and husk or tuber. Seeds are the product of the ripened ovule, after the embryo sac is fertilized by sperm from pollen, forming a zygote. The embryo within a seed develops from the zygote and grows within the mother plant to a certain size before growth is halted.

Cathedral

A cathedral is a church that contains the cathedra of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominations with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and some Lutheran churches. Church buildings embodying the functions of a cathedral first appeared in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and North Africa in the 4th century, but cathedrals did not become universal within the Western Catholic Church until the 12th century, by which time they had developed architectural forms, institutional structures, and legal identities distinct from parish churches, monastic churches, and episcopal residences. The cathedral is more important in the hierarchy than the church because it is from the cathedral that the bishop governs the area under their administrative authority.

seed

Noun

1. Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.
2. A fertilized and ripened ovule, containing an embryonic plant.

Verb

1. To plant or sow an area with seeds.
2. To shed seeds (refers to plants)

cathedral

Adjective

1. Relating to the office of a bishop or an archbishop.

Noun

1. The principal church serving as the office (and some as place of residence) of an archdiocese's/a diocese's archbishop/bishop which is symbolized by an episcopal throne known as the cathedra.
2. A large or important church building.