Plant Pavilion, Qingdao Expo Garden (植物馆, 青岛世博园)

The Plant Pavilion is one of the main buildings of the Qingdao international horticultural exposition, held from 25 April to 25 October 2014 in Licang District. The park's official site describes it as one of its landmark buildings: its form is taken from a leaf, an image of a seed sprouting and growing. The architectural concept is credited to the Shanghai Institute of Architectural Design and Research, while the British practice Weddle Landscape Design devised the horticultural programme. According to Weddle, work on the glasshouse took three years and the pavilion opened on 28 April 2014.

The steel frame went up in nearly a hundred days, in mid-winter. The company responsible for the structure says the frame was topped out in January 2013 and that the whole job ended in September 2013; a January 2014 report places the end of the main works in early October 2013, with fit-out still under way ahead of the Spring Festival.

The park became permanent after the exposition: the official site gives an opening date of 28 March 2015. In 2019 the press described a neglected site; since 1 January 2020 Licang District has run it, and the park reopened eight months later. On 9 September 2026 the park announced that the pavilion would close the next day to renew the former jellyfish area. It reopened on 1 October 2026 as 在河之洲·自然共生馆 (literally a hall of symbiosis with nature), keeping its plant zones and opening an aerial walkway for the first time.

Seen from the air, the building forms a leaf. The official site gives it about 23,000 m² of built area and a height varying from 12 to 35 m; the landscape designer Weddle quotes 12,800 m² of floor area instead. The underground part is concrete, topped by a steel canopy: a space-grid frame of arched tubular trusses with an inverted-triangle section, linked by a single-layer lattice shell. The steel outline measures 193 m by 118 m and the main trusses span nearly 70 m. Four volumes of identical structure match the four exhibition zones planned at the outset.

Roof and façades form a curtain wall of laminated extra-clear glass, which leaves the frame visible from outside. The glazing is more than 10,000 curved triangular panes according to a January 2014 report, 15,000 toughened glass panels in triple glazing according to the designer. For climate, natural ventilation between 6 and 30 °C according to Weddle, central air conditioning holding the temperate halls between 10 and 25 °C according to the report. The park bills it as China's first energy-saving glasshouse; the designer adds that the glazed roof is high enough for 30 m trees to grow.

Before the 2026 works the pavilion had four zones: the jellyfish world, Bamboo Poetry (竹林诗韵), Desert Scenery (沙漠风情) and Spring Mountain Valley (春山幽谷). Local press in 2021 and the park's own site give more than 500 species and 10,000 plants; in 2014 the designer spoke of 3,000 varieties.

The bamboo zone counted 57 species in early 2014, including the giant 巨龙竹, nicknamed the king of bamboos, and the tortoise-shell bamboo 龟甲竹. The temperate zone, with about 300 species at that date, showed cacti and palms, among them two cacti 3 m tall. A 2021 report also shows a tropical forest and an artificial waterfall. For the desert and valley zones, the park's site lists curiosities: a flowering cycad, a single tree forming a forest, the strangler habit; the valley holds the Buddhist "five trees and six flowers".

Since October 2026 these three plant zones have been kept as they were; the former jellyfish world has become an Amazon aquatic world, with fresh-water and sea-water tanks; the undersea tunnel and the jellyfish maze have reopened.

The pavilion stands on the north-east side of Qingdao Expo Garden and is visited on a ticket of its own. The park's site stresses a constant temperature and humidity inside, whether it is very hot or very cold outside, which makes it a natural refuge on days of hard frost as well as fierce heat.

The metro (line 11) serves the park, with a bus connection to the gate. Around it lie about a hundred Chinese and foreign gardens and a lotus pavilion (莲花馆), enough to fill a day alongside the pavilion itself. The October 2026 reopening changed zones and attractions, so the park's announcements are worth checking.