Best known for favorable cliches about watches, mountains and chocolate by most Chinese, the Switzerland Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo is trying to display the country's strengths in the field of science that are of importance to the international community.

Manuel Salchli, Deputy Commissioner General and Pavilion Director of the Switzerland Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo said in an interview with Xinhua that technology has contributed to sustainable prosperity in urban development, and that the Shanghai Expo provides a great opportunity for Switzerland to show the world those ideas and technologies used everyday to offer its citizens a high quality of life.

The principal theme chosen for the Shanghai Expo, "Better City, Better Life", is an ideal chance for Switzerland to demonstrate that it is an innovative and environmentally aware country, said Salchli.

Also, the official Swiss Pavilion offers an exciting, interactive approach to the sub-theme of the Expo: "rural-urban interaction". The overall concept for the exhibition is a balance between man, nature and technology.

By riding on a chairlift, visitors can move out of the heaviness of the city into the lightness of nature where people hover above the green, flowering meadow covering the roof of the pavilion. In this way, the pavilion places the pavilion themes of sustainability and the quality of life in a repeating cycle.

Walking through the pavilion the public discovers that the building has a facade that is both interactive and intelligent, which shows in a playful manner how much unused energy there is all around.

The facade enveloping the pavilion is a curtain of woven aluminium elements under which visitors pass to access the urban area on the ground floor of the building.

LED lights comprised of an energy source, a storage unit and a consuming unit are incorporated into the facade. The energy produced is made visible in the form of flashes that are triggered by the pavilion surroundings, such as the sun or flashes made by visitors' cameras.

Thanks to the storage of energy in each individual cell, the facade is also active at night when the cells trigger each other.

Salchli said because Switzerland has few natural resources, the nation invests in its educational system, as well as in research, science and technology, and there is always a high readiness to be innovative, adding that more Swiss companies are seeking technology cooperation and building their research centers in China, rather than building factories.

"For example, Novartis AG has become the latest pharmaceutical giant to pour resources into China, announcing in November 2009 that it will make China a third global pillar for its research and development," Salchli said, "This is a good trend."