20.04.2010 - Design & Architecture

A city in miniature

The countdown has begun, and there are only few more days to go. From 1 May to 31 October, the EXPO 2010 World’s Fair will be taking place over an area of 5.28 square kilometres on both sides of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, a metropolis with millions of inhabitants. The preparations are proceeding apace, and rehearsals are already underway in the German Pavilion. This economic powerhouse will not only be presenting its roots and traditions, but will also be showcasing itself as a land of innovation with a vibrant culture and outstanding quality of life. In line with the event’s theme, “Better City, Better Life”, a new word took shape: ‘balancity’. This refers to a city that is able to achieve the proper balance between preservation and renewal, innovation and tradition, urbanity and nature, community and the individual, work and leisure, globalisation and national identity.

The objective of the German contribution to the Expo is truly an ambitious one, and anyone familiar with Germany's contributions to World’s Fairs past will be well aware of the contradictions inherent in some of the solutions, particularly from an architectural viewpoint. The German Pavilion at the Expo in Hannover ten years ago gave rise to particular controversy, although one should always keep in mind the fact that achieving the right balance between architecture, technology, culture and public appeal is never an easy task. Now it is Shanghai’s turn, and we can be certain that superlatives will reign supreme. After all, this World’s Fair will be bigger than recent World’s Fairs not only in its total area and number of participants, but in all probability the number of visitors as well. The grounds in the heart of Shanghai will be hosting the presentations of 242 countries and organisations; the German Pavilion alone is expecting 45,000 visitors a day, and more than eight million over the course of the entire event. A 450-person team will be overseeing the German Pavilion. There will be 250 hosts and hostesses on hand for visitors, while another 200 people will be in charge of catering in the German restaurant. The architecture of the German Pavilion has the appearance of a gigantic, three-dimensional sculpture whose complexity can hardly be comprehended at first glance – it is this complexity that is intended to symbolise the integration of the city and its surrounding landscape into a single living organism. The architecture of ‘balancity’ was developed by the Schmidhuber + Kaindl architectural office of Munich. Exhibition and media design are the responsibility of Milla + Partner of Stuttgart, and execution is in the hands of Nüssli, a construction firm based in Roth near Nuremberg. Koelnmesse is overseeing the fair organisation.

The German Pavilion is divided into the landscape and the structures. Four large exhibition structures serve as symbols of the interplay between applying force and bearing it, and between leaning and being supported. It is only through their interplay that the buildings achieve balance and stability. The façade is covered with a transparent, silvery textile membrane that reduces the volume of sunlight during the day and functions as a light canopy at night. A tunnel leads visitors to a harbour. They reach the entrance by traversing a terrace landscape. The path continues on through a planning office, a garden and a park, before taking visitors into a factory and a city centre, after which they arrive at the energy source, the city’s power station. Each of the rooms displays innovative processes, ideas and products from Germany that help to create better lives in the city. As is to be expected in a city, visitors move through these rooms both actively and passively: sometimes by walking, other times using moving walkways. They are accompanied by Jens and Yanyan, travel companions who act as ambassadors between the cultures and who appear only virtually at first. Without a doubt, the highlight of the German pavilion is the energy source at the end of the tour. Peter Redlin and Ingo Kaske (Milla + Partner) of Stuttgart certainly came up with something special. Within the twenty metre-high arena, a sphere weighing more than a tonne and fitted with 400,000 LEDs is suspended from a pendulum. Voices and noise are all it takes to set it into motion, for it always moves towards the direction where this noise is the loudest. Microphones have been fitted in the ceiling to measure the noise level, and this information is fed into a sophisticated system which controls the pendulum. The development of this construction required complex experiments, and the University of Stuttgart provided tremendous support. During the seven-minute show, the sphere develops its own breathtaking dynamism. The imagery displayed on this gigantic pendulum shows a city in which both renewal and preservation are valued. The extremely complex construction which was developed solely for this purpose is the most impressive example of German technology exemplifying ‘balancity’ at its best, in conjunction with a surprisingly playful nonchalance. 

 The topics of municipal development and work are currently being discussed at various levels. Ever since the division between work and leisure propagated in the earlier twentieth century became a thing of the past, municipal planning has increasingly been transformed into an extremely complex control mechanism in living environments of growing intricacy. As a result, the manner in which the German Pavilion deals with the theme of ‘balancity’ is certainly worth the anticipation it has generated. W.O.Geberzahn More information: http://www.expo2010-deutschland.de http://www.expo2010-deutschland.de