Exposition, Societal Responsitivity and the Aesthetics of Impermanence: Temporal Findings from the 1970 World Exhibition

<p>The architecture of the world expositions maintains an historically unique position within the built environment. Raised specifically for the hosting of these temporary events, the architecture and design of the exposition grounds have been viewed in this thesis as a means to present the aspirations of a country. Expositions were also physical manifestations of the development of new tools, materials, techniques, or aesthetics, ushering in notions of change and progress. However, exhibition architecture can similarly be interpreted as a vehicle responding to the changing pressures within a society. Both historical and contemporary reports locate the world expositions as highly anticipated for education, communication, enjoyment and even competition. Parallel to this, the international expositions have existed as an area of well resourced critical research. With over 150 years of exposition, the historical, political, social, urban and architectural aspects of these events have been increasingly explored as locations to identify and define avantgarde and progressive explorations in the moderation of space. In contrast to this, the world exposition of 1970 exists as a comparatively unexplored area of`study in the West. Expo’70, located in Osaka, Japan, was poorly received and heavily criticised in Western media sources. Academics, architects and critics slated the event as bizarre, ridiculous, and excessive, and one source even noted that Expo’70 had “brought about the end of the world fairs”. While perhaps some of these comments can be attributed to remoteness, and vastly unknown sensory experiences that many non-Japanese visitors would be exposed too, a difficulty in accessing first hand accounts from the Japanese themselves may also account for a lack of understanding within Western architectural discourse. However, Expo’70 was, and still is, an important phenomenon in its native land. A search using Japanese language through any Japanese university library will return a vast collection of titles covering areas such as social science, politics, technology, and architecture. In response to these findings, this thesis locates the importance of the event to the Japanese as a whole. I propose that Expo’70 manifested a number of qualities or conditions that the Japanese society could locate within their existing aesthetic vocabularies, which are discussed and displayed in this thesis through both drawing and text. Within this context the drawn material operates an important strategy as both a mechanism of display and a means to explore the shifting and transitory spatial qualities that are discussed within the text. Rather than a turning point, the thesis argues that, Expo’70 existed as a form of vantage for Japanese society to observe the unfolding changes within their society, both material and immaterial.</p>

Exposition, Societal Responsitivity and the Aesthetics of Impermanence: Temporal Findings from the 1970 World Exhibition

<p>The architecture of the world expositions maintains an historically unique position within the built environment. Raised specifically for the hosting of these temporary events, the architecture and design of the exposition grounds have been viewed in this thesis as a means to present the aspirations of a country. Expositions were also physical manifestations of the development of new tools, materials, techniques, or aesthetics, ushering in notions of change and progress. However, exhibition architecture can similarly be interpreted as a vehicle responding to the changing pressures within a society. Both historical and contemporary reports locate the world expositions as highly anticipated for education, communication, enjoyment and even competition. Parallel to this, the international expositions have existed as an area of well resourced critical research. With over 150 years of exposition, the historical, political, social, urban and architectural aspects of these events have been increasingly explored as locations to identify and define avantgarde and progressive explorations in the moderation of space. In contrast to this, the world exposition of 1970 exists as a comparatively unexplored area of`study in the West. Expo’70, located in Osaka, Japan, was poorly received and heavily criticised in Western media sources. Academics, architects and critics slated the event as bizarre, ridiculous, and excessive, and one source even noted that Expo’70 had “brought about the end of the world fairs”. While perhaps some of these comments can be attributed to remoteness, and vastly unknown sensory experiences that many non-Japanese visitors would be exposed too, a difficulty in accessing first hand accounts from the Japanese themselves may also account for a lack of understanding within Western architectural discourse. However, Expo’70 was, and still is, an important phenomenon in its native land. A search using Japanese language through any Japanese university library will return a vast collection of titles covering areas such as social science, politics, technology, and architecture. In response to these findings, this thesis locates the importance of the event to the Japanese as a whole. I propose that Expo’70 manifested a number of qualities or conditions that the Japanese society could locate within their existing aesthetic vocabularies, which are discussed and displayed in this thesis through both drawing and text. Within this context the drawn material operates an important strategy as both a mechanism of display and a means to explore the shifting and transitory spatial qualities that are discussed within the text. Rather than a turning point, the thesis argues that, Expo’70 existed as a form of vantage for Japanese society to observe the unfolding changes within their society, both material and immaterial.</p>

‘Un'arte ancora in embrione’: international expositions, empire, and the evolution of Fascist architectural design

This article reconsiders the development of Fascist architecture throughout the late interwar period. It pays especial attention to the structures erected for the most significant international expositions held, or planned to be held, between 1933 and 1942, in order to identify significant trends in Party-sponsored design. It argues that the ‘dynamism’ of Fascist design was a consequence of the regime's preference for an increasingly imperial tone which developed in direct proportion to its increasingly imperial identity. It points to Piacentini and Pagano's Italian Pavilion built for the 1937 Paris Exposition, the first national pavilion constructed following the May 1936 proclamation of empire, as a significant flashpoint in the tension between Fascist interpretations of modern and classical design. This article concludes that the often-overlooked world's fair buildings can be viewed as crystalline distillations of the stylistic experimentation which defined the broader Fascist building programme both in Italy and abroad.

Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs

International expositions or "world’s fairs" are the largest and most important stage on which millions routinely gather to directly experience, express, and respond to cultural difference. Rather than looking at Asian representation at the hands of colonizing powers, something already much examined, Asian Self-Representation at World’s Fairs instead focuses on expressions of an empowered Asian self-representation at world’s fairs in the West after the so-called golden age of the exhibition. New modes of representation became possible as the older "exhibitionary order" of earlier fairs gave way to a dominant "performative order," one increasingly preoccupied with generating experience and affect. Using case studies of national representation at selected fairs over the hundred-year period from 1915-2015, this book considers both the politics of representation as well as what happens within the imaginative worlds of Asian country pavilions, where the performative has become the dominant mode for imprinting directly on human bodies.

Conclusion

While diminished audience numbers and the impossible scale of resources required to successfully pull off international expositions over the last fifty years suggests that their days are numbered in the West, the extraordinary draw of the 2010 Shanghai Expo (73.1 million) demonstrates that the form is far from dead. The massive resources that flowed into that expo and the 2020 Dubai Exposition would suggest that top-down economies, ones where the state functions as the seat of corporate power, can create an attractive platform for any ambitious nation to seek out a seat at the table. The future of representation at world’s fairs may thus be more about ‘nationalising the sell’ than representing nation.

Introduction

The chapter sets out the rationale for and structure for this inquiry into Asian self-representation at World’s Fairs, or international expositions. Using a case-studies approach, the book will consider how independent Asian nations have sought to shape and control the ways in which they were represented at these events. China and Japan at the San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915 are the focus of the first two chapters, followed by Japan in at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair, and China at Expo ’88 in Brisbane. Other fairs and nations examined in the 100-year span of this inquiry include the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair (the Philippines and Indonesia) and the 2015 Milan International Exposition (Thailand and Korea).