The international exposition has a long, grand history, dating back to the 1851 London show in which architect Joseph Paxton debuted the Glass Palace — a building that has been associated with the forward march of modernity ever since. World’s Fairs that followed in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia also displayed the latest innovations, be it in building design, product invention, or other creative industries. The event now takes place every five years in far-flung destinations, organized around overly optimistic themes. The 2015 edition, in Milan, takes as its motif “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life." Sadly the program does not live up to its storied past. Many architecture-world personalities have made their displeasure known, with complaints about unimaginative presentations and corporate encroachment (McDonalds and Eataly for example, both have pavilions, which have historically been the preserve of participating nations).
Yet perhaps it’s simply time to stop using the metric of progress and invention when judging the Expo’s value. The fair may no longer display ambitions for the future, but it does say a great deal about contemporary societies and their concepts of architecture. The international exposition is still, after all, a massive convocation of countries, with more than 130 participating this year, and it thus provides a forum for comparing their abilities to produce convincing cultural propaganda in accordance with a set theme.
In Milan, dictators really blew it out of the water — many of them, curiously, contributing to the postmodernism revival that’s been a popular, contentious topic this summer. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Bahrain, all deserve gold stars, even if their pavilions didn’t make our list.
Not-so-honorable mentions: the United States and Britain. What boring, banal structures they contributed. Russia and Estonia presented far more interesting cantilevers than the U.S., and Britain had some half-ephemeral claptrap by Thomas Heatherwick. Come on, Western democracies — do something right for a change!
Turkmenistan
Without a doubt, the best pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo belongs to Turkmenistan: a glided, marble-clad study in ornamentation that puts Western postmodernism to shame. In a Eurocentric world that often seeks to discount or deny the creative agency of petty autocrats, Turkmen president-for-life Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov proves his detractors wrong — at least on aesthetic grounds (his human rights record is altogether less sparkling than his architecture).
The three-story box features an LED-equipped façade that also displays traditional national symbols and geometric patterns. Inside, two massive carpets hang ceiling to floor, flanking a massive LED disco ball that shows filmed reels of Turkmen rugs and muskmelons. The exhibitions on the first and second floors focus on national achievements — in particular, Berdimukhamedov’s, with one memorable display showing copies of his book, Medicinal Plants of Turkmenistan, alongside photographs of fantastical architecture of marble and tinted glass.
South Korea
If “You Are What You Eat” — as South Korea’s variation on the expo’s overarching theme, exclaims — the East Asian country’s bulbous white pavilion suggests at first glance that it has been consuming benevolent forest fungi over the past five years. Yet it turns out that Korea is actually a rarity among the Expo participants in not modeling its pavilion on a local foodstuff. Known as the Moon Jar, the building derives its shape from traditional pottery made in the shape of the full moon. The exhibitions inside include a section devoted to food storage, as well as displays about fermentation.
Qatar
Qatar chose to interpret the Expo’s foodie theme in very literal terms — terms that were popularized by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown: The country’s pavilion is a cross between the two postmodernists’ “duck” and “decorated shed.” The multistory main structure is realized in the historicist style associated with local markets, with a massive jafeer, a traditional woven breadbasket, installed on the roof. Programming inside the pavilion revolves around the basket theme, in case that wasn’t already obvious.
Holy See
Although the other European microstates chose not to participate in this year’s Expo, the Vatican City erected a modest pavilion that, avoiding the ornamentation so popular elsewhere, might be mistaken for a church from a distance. The Holy See’s presence makes a great deal of sense, given the importance of food and drink in Catholic texts and liturgy.
United Arab Emirates
The UAE pavilion was one of the few created by a name-brand architect, Norman Foster, who also designed the MIT-affiliated Masdar Institute located in the desert of Abu Dhabi. The structure in Milan, whose undulating terra-cotta façade will be dismantled and transported to Masdar City when the expo is over, contains exhibits about Ramadan and popular traditional foods like dates and fish.
