I want to go to this:

Friday 14 May 2010


I always thought the Great exhibition of 1851 looked so amazing, with all the nations of the world exhibiting their products and culture be it the world's first voting machine or yellow arsenic from China. The Koh-i-Noor, then the world's biggest diamond was also displayed.


Following on from this tradition, the Shanghai Expo which has just opened now looks equally amazing with pavilions representing different nations. Above is the Chinese pavilion, the 'Oriental crown' which has halls for each of the different regions of China.


The Japan pavilion looks rather like some creature from a Miyazaki film and is said to be a 'breathing organism' in which a double layer membrane will filter sunshine into the inside of the building. Intelligent robots will also play a part inside the pavilion!


The Polish pavilion was inspired by traditional Polish folk art paper cut outs.


Inside the South Korea pavilion.


The UK Pavilion has 60,000 transparent acrylic rods containing seeds of different plants collected in a bio-diversity project.



The Dutch one looks like a fun park but I quite like it nonetheless. Known as 'Happy Street' it is shaped like the number 8, a lucky number in China.


Inspired by a ballet about a fairy-tale, the Danish pavilion combines outside and indoor areas joined in a circle and is meant to represent the best aspects of Danish city life.

See here and here for more information and pictures about the Shanghai Expo.
And thanks to Bonny for sending me some of these images!

1 comment:

Mlle Paradis said...

wonderful post! how cool are all these pavilions? too bad there is so much bad news about at the moment, otherwise these would be enjoying much more space in our news outlets. thanks for the intro ellen!