Echoing the slogan of Expo 2010 Shanghai "Better City, Better Life", the German Pavilion takes the visitors on a tour to "balancity" - a newly coined word signifying a city in balance. Life in a city can be eminently desirable if it provides a balance between renewal and preservation, innovation and tradition, urbanity and nature.

Visitors to "balancity" will embark on a journey in a city of ideas, moving around as they would in a real city through thematic areas representing different urban spaces including a harbor, a garden and a city square.

Bayer MaterialScience AG, one of the world's largest producers of polymers and high-performance plastics, decorates the "balancity" with solid and multi-wall sheets made from the polycarbonate Makrolon.

"This creative usage of our sheets reflects the extensive design freedom they offer thanks to their easy formability, lighter weight when compared with glass, and their robustness in trade fair/exhibition construction and interior design," said Markus Hoschke, head of the Bayer Sheet skills network in Asia.

The floating "flakes" in the "harbor" are made from three-dimensional curved solid sheets by Bayer Sheet Korea. With shapes like potato chips and synthetically processed surfaces, the flexibly interlinked flakes reinforce the spectacular effect of the entire space with their bluish transparency.

An area of around 320 square meters has been designed with flakes made from 4.5-millimeter thick solid sheets of Makrolon UV clear and GP clear grades, which were thermoformed and then fashioned by an artist.

In the "garden" area, nine wave-like sails suspended from the ceiling float over the visitors' heads, offering visual insights into the German garden, together with the images on the walls. The backlit sails were produced by cold forming multi UV triple-wall sheets of transparent Makrolon from Bayer Sheet Europe. In a similar way to collages, the sails are lined with canvas or paper and fastened to steel tubular frames attached to steel cables.

The 16-millimeter thick, impact-resistant triple-wall sheets have also been used in the "city square" to make 10 visually striking backlit images that represent a skyline and frame a large sculpture that serves as a film projection surface.

Some of the multi-wall sheets are given a special, long-lasting, water-dispersing coating on the side facing the room, thus ensuring all condensation will become an even water film that can drain off in a controlled process, and therefore preventing unwanted water droplets from forming on the inner side of the sheets, which may affect refraction.

"In addition to their familiar applications in dome construction, stadium roofing and conservatories, Makrolon multi-UV twin-wall sheets are also highly suitable for use in the design of trade fair and exhibition stands. Expo 2010 Shanghai provides a prime example of this," said Guenther Winnerl, head of marketing at Bayer Sheet Europe.

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