Rethinking the world expo

Abstract

Throughout history, the World’s Fair has brought together nations to share accomplishments, technological advances, industrial might, architectural experimentation, and cultural identity. World’s Fair buildings are largely temporary structures, which often leave a significant carbon footprint and sites that are difficult to adapt after their use. Additionally, the current nature of World’s Fairs tends to favor specific countries through their pavilion sizes, dollars invested, and prominence within the broader master plan. More recently, fairs of this size tend to increasingly rely on private investors, pressuring the pavilions to act more as advertisements for specific companies or industries than as cultural representations of a given. This project tries to bring the world “architecturally” together and becomes a world Expo for all people through the design of an alternative World’s Fair. To more accurately represent the multiple cultures at the World’s Fair, I will: assess historical case studies to find successful examples; analyze the funding structures that further some agendas while minimizing others: analyze afterlife of previous world fairs; and spatially analyze World’s Fair sites to understand how they spatially prioritize some countries and ultimately leave an unsustainable carbon footprint. As a design proposal, I intend to redefine the current trend of making monumental pavilions and plan to instead make sites more equitable for all cultures involved. To do so, I will explore ideas to make the Expo transnational for all people around the world instead of country based pavilions, as well as try to create a new expo format in order to address the afterlife of the expo and its equitability.