The bee’s knees: UK’s Expo pavilion to come to Kew Gardens

The UK’s pavilion at last year’s Milan Expo is coming to London in June, to be re-erected in Kew Gardens. Known as the Hive, the 17-metre-high aluminum lattice structure is an immersive, multi-sensory experience inspired by scientific research into the health of bees. Designed by the Nottingham artist Wolfgang Buttress, it cost £7m and will be on loan from the UK government until at least the end of 2017. The 40-tonne pavilion was dismantled late last year, after Expo closed, and will be rebuilt in front of the Orangery. Visitors will enter it via a wildflower meadow, as though they were worker bees returning to the hive. Richard Deverell, the Kew director, describes the structure as “a remarkable marriage of architecture and science”.