Volvo Cars Launches The 'Pure Tension Pavilion' in Italy

The winning structure was created by Alvin Huang's Synthesis Design + Architecture (SDA), with offices in Los Angeles and London. Following SDA's competition win, the project entered the production phase during the summer. The structure took shape between July and September in Chicago under the care of Fabric Images, a company specialized in this type of design creation. Its final assembly and first functional testing took place in October in Bologna, close to the head offices of Volvo Car Italia.

With its strong visual impact, the “Pure Tension pavilion” expresses a complete sense of absolute mobility, demonstrating flexibility and efficiency through Volvo Cars' hybrid technology. The pavilion is a flexible mesh structure held in place by carbon fiber rods and is embedded with photovoltaic cells so that it can absorb energy from the sun or indoor lighting. The car will ‘plug’ directly into the pavilion’s skin, charging its battery with the energy collected over the day.

Given its highly innovative nature, Pure Tension has directed significant interest towards the Volvo Car Group, and more precisely to the Volvo Monitoring & Concept Center (VMCC). Based in Camarillo, California, the center assesses all elements of Pure Tension's future potential (including the cars, infrastructure and technological prerequisites that it would need to function in).

Michele Crisci, President of Volvo Car Italia commented "We have rewarded an idea that is fantastic, simple and at the same time highly sophisticated from a creative point of view. I expected a project that was able to convey what is fundamentally Volvo Cars, which in addition to safety, means quality, environmental sustainability, functionality and making technology available to everyone. In this, we have it all. And to see it brought to reality increases the buzz that the initial idea generated even further."

Credits: Oneshift News Team