Expo 2020: a Look Ahead

In 2020, Dubai will bec ome the first Middle E astern city to host a w orld’s fair in the nearly 17 0-year history of the globe-spanning e xhibition. Running for six mon ths from October, 2020 to April, 2021 in the U nited Ar ab Emirates’ (UAE) largest city, Expo 2020 is expected to draw an audience of 25 million people, 70 per cent of which are expected to c ome from outside the UAE to see the pavilions of approximately 190 nations, ranging from A lbania to A ustria, and P akistan to Peru.

Traditionally, the world’s fair is a venue that debuts innovative products and novel technologies – think, for example, of the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, zippers, Imax movies, electrical plugs, even solar power, and autonomous cars. But these fairs also allow their participating countries to exert soft power on a gargantuan platform, highlighting their “brand” as emergent players on a world stage through state-of-the-art, even radical, design and architecture. Britain did it with its groundbreaking Crystal Palace at the very first world’s fair in 1851, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations. Inspired by the design of giant Amazonian water lily, Victoria amazonica, the Crystal Palace was an engineering marvel comprising 990,000 panes of glass held together by 1,000 iron columns, 202 miles of sash bar, and 30 miles of guttering.

France, arguably, built the mother of all world’s fair sculptures with the Eiffel Tower at the 1889 Exposition Universelle.

Soaring 1,063 feet into the sky the Eiffel Tower reigned as the tallest building on Earth until New

York’s Chrysler building was finished 41 years later in 1930 –its mesh lattice encompassed a dizzying 18,038 pieces of iron with 2.5 million rivets driven in by around 300 steel workers. Few manmade constructions could compete with it for creative inspiration: Over the years, the Eiffel Tower’s soaring silhouette has been captured by artists as diverse as Georges Seurat and Robert Delaunay.

More recently, China’s and Britain’s pavilions at Expo 2010 in Shanghai raised the bar to stratospheric levels for these buildings. Nicknamed “The crown of the East,” the 63-meter-high (207 feet) China pavilion ranks as the tallest national pavilion ever – and with a price tag of $220 million, the most expensive one in expo history as well. Resembling the crimson crown worn by ancient emperors, it was made of 56 traditional “dougong” brackets, each one representing a Chinese ethnic minority. In contrast to this exercise in realpolitik, the United Kingdom’s six-story-tall “Seed Cathedral” consisted of 60,000 see-though acrylic tubes (each filled with a seed from Royal

Botanical Gardens’ Millennium Seedbank project) that fluttered in the breeze. Each of the 7.5meter-long (24.5 feet) tubes was filled with fiber-optic filaments that illumined the structure at night. From a distance, the building appeared to be an extraterrestrial dandelion that slowly faded in and out of reality.

Marvelous as these pavilions were, their architectural audacity may be challenged by the pavilions planned for the 2020 world’s fair, whose overall theme is “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future.” (However, individual nations can, and often do, add their own supplementary themes). In its ambition to “outShanghai Shanghai,” Expo 2020 may offer some of the most breathtaking pavilions and unforgettable experiences consistent with a land that brags the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building on the planet, and which looks like an art-deco rocket ship about to launch.

Luxembourg’s pavilion, for example, will look like a giant Möbius strip pushed over on its side.

Germany

Over a period of nearly 90 years, German y’s pavilions have reigned as the architectural avant garde at world expos. Mies van der Rohe’s Germany pavilion at the 1929 Barcelona In ternational Exposition established the standard for sleek, modernis t design, while Frei Ot to’s pavilion for Expo’67 in Mon treal used a steel-mesh c overed by a translucent plastic skin that suggested an amoeba o f science- fiction dimensions. Now for Expo 2020, Laboratory f or Visionary Architecture (LAVA) will use a freeform roof that shel ters multiple interwoven fl oating cubes housing exhibition spaces. The roof will consist o f an opaque trapezoidal single-layer ETFE membrane all owing light rays to pour into the interior through numerous small openings, constantly changing thought the day as the sun transits across the sky. Inside, a verdant central atrium will connect all the cubes in which exhibits crafted by Facts and Fiction GmbH will educate and amuse visit ors.

Poland

Poland’s design w as inspired by journeying fowl: 75 percent of birds in the Ar ab world are born and nest in Poland before migr ating to that w armer clime. Acc ordingly, the pavilion will be made from shipping-container-like wooden boxes, enclosed by steel rods holding thousands o f paper birds that will flutter in the breeze. The avian activity will also serve as a metaphor for ideas that take wing and travel to dis tant destinations.

United Arab Emirates

Nature inspired the pavilion for the United Ar ab Emirates (UAE) as well. For nearly 4,000 year s, f alconry has been an essential part of desert life in the UAE from subsistence hunting to regal sporting. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that the S antiago-Calatrava-designed 15,000- square-meter (161,400 square feet) UAE P avilion will mimic the outstretched, smooth-edged wings of the raptor that can climb to 8,000 feet and dive a fter its prey at 214 kp/h (150 mph).

Sweden

Sweden’s pavilion will merge bo th nature and geometry. Designed by architects from Sweden, Italy, and France, the Nordic country’s building will include hundreds of massive tree-like structures creating a stylized forest. A v ariety of o ffices and meeting rooms will be located high up on these pillar s, like treehouses, and c overed with wooden lattice screens inspired by Middle-Eastern mashrabiyas. A type of projecting window, mashrabiyas are enclosed with intricately carved wooden latticework, who se recurring, mathematically precise elements allow in an elegan t play of light and shadow.

United States

At Expo 2015 in Milan, the United S tates’ pavilion deftly mixed the ol d and the new into a striking architectur al statement: a 300- foot-long deck promenade made of wood recovered from C oney I sland’s his toric boardwalk c omplemented a 7,200-squarefoot vertical farm, who se 1,494 au tomated hydroponic modules hel d more than three dozen types of vege tables, grains, herb s, and fruits. Its overall effect suggested the country tha t gave rise to the first cas t-iron plow and the threshing machine to feed a hungry world o f the past would also lead the w ay to nourish a starving planet in the future. For Expo 2020, the U.S. effort will focus on the fu ture again, but this time in the area of movement, not diet, with a tagline of “What Moves You: The Spirit of Mobility.” Designed by Fentress Architects, the $60-million U.S. pavilion will presen t a circular, almost carousel-like façade, with vertical sections on the exterior seeming to slant forward, producing the feeling that it’s moving forward. Inside, the pavilion will showcase advances in v arious forms of mobility –social, financial, and logistical, in an experience crafted by George P J ohnson Experience Marketing. Most significant will be the mock-up of the Virgin Hyperloop O ne (VHO), which employs a linear electric motor to accelerate and decelerate an electromagnetically levitated pod through an underground pipe.

Visit ors will be able to enter either of two pods based on VHO designs, and then, through a series of animated, mechanical, and video animation, experience wha t it would be like to ride in 1,080 km/h (670 mph) vehicles tha t could make the trip between Munch and Athens a quick one hour and 45 minutes. Rounding out the experience will be a simulation of the Martian landscape. Partnering with the B uzz A ldrin Space Institute, the U.S. pavilion will showcase space technol ogy that could speed us t o the Red Planet by 2039, the 7 0th anniversary of Apoll o 11 moon landing.

United Kingdom

Dubbed the “Poem Pavilion,” the U nited Kingdom’s contribution to Expo 2020 will weave the power o f Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the structure. Resembling a giant megaphone, the timber-lined pavilion is being designed by British artist Es Devlin, best known for her large-scale art ins tallations, and the closing ceremon y of the London Olympics in 2012. (Devlin is also the first female to win a commis - sion for the UK’s world expo pavilion design.) Attendees will en ter through an illuminated maze, then be invited to contribute words from kiosks, after which an AI-powered algorithm will collect and parse them into poe try. The poems will then be displayed in LEDs on the front o f the 20-by-52-meter (66 by 171 feet) façade.

Before President McKinley w as shot at the 1901 Buffalo P an-American Exposition, he o ffered his vision of world’s fairs. “Expo sitions are the timekeepers o f progress. They record the world’s advancement. They s timulate the energy, enterprise, and intellect of the people; and quicken human genius. These buil dings will disappear; this crea tion of art and beauty and indus try will perish from sight, bu t their influence will remain …” A fter Expo 2020 is closed and its brilliant pavilions dismantled, the genius of its architects will live on, with each structure an individual stanza of an epic poem.

AUTHOR CHARLES PAPPAS