WHY EXPO

Why EXPO? — A comparative analysis of the possible reasons behind world exposition’s long lasting success

Abstract “Mega-event are much discussed, but seldom defined.”1 Scholars from different domains have contributed to expand its definition and it is generally agreed now that the term refers to human activities that are “Short-term, one-time, high profile/ The mass media carries the event to the world/ Has a significant or permanent urban effect.” It’s of my own interest to analyze one specific type of mega-event in this essay, the World Exposition, because of it’s significant but ambiguous role played in modern society. The essay intend to find the possible answers of one ambitious question Why is “Expositions”, this specific type of public event that requires huge capital and normally difficult to organize, that have flourished globally in the past 200 years and have managed to intensively engage with multiple layers of society.

Three classical case studies are analyzed in this essay, the Great Exposition in 1871, the Osaka Expo 70’ in 1970, and the Panasonic Time capsule project in 1967 in order to provide a comparative approach, in terms of time and scale, towards the possible answer.

The First Great Exposition The main incentives behind the 1871 great expo, which is the first one of its kind and has last six months in Hyde Park, was on one hand the willing to celebrate the present technologies, showcasing the creativity and prosperity of United kingdom, and on the other hand the belief for such a mega-event to stimulate national economy in terms of getting more private entrepreneur sponsored internationally, and earning enough money to develop the Hyde Park area, rural at that time, into the later ambitious cultural centre with a collection of museums serving different cultural purpose. In this sense, from the very beginning, the purpose of such international event we named as “Exposition” is to capture a general sense of the most advanced present meanwhile to publish the wild imagination of the possible future in an illustrative, materialized and convincing way.

It is also important to notice that one fundamental idea of this event, which is “to leave no trace”, was embedded in the whole process from the initial construction to the final dismantling. In one of the only few well-preserved ‘Catalogue of the Great Exposition’, it writes that “Before anything, however, could be done, it was necessary to obtain the consent of the Crown to such an appropriation of a portion of the most important of the London parks.”2 The consent of the master plan of Architect Sir Joseph Paxton was “graciously accorded”, but “it was accompanied with the condition that when the Exhibition was over, the ground should be restored to its original state, and be rendered again fit for public recreation and enjoyment”3 Without any doubt, the condition set by the crown

had been accomplished successfully, as if we go to Hyde park today“upon the site itself nothing now remains to mark its whereabouts, unless it be two elm trees, carefully protected from injury by iron railings…They serve to mark the centre of the building, and afford a tolerable notion of the height and length of the central transept, being trees of mature age, and fair forest specimens of their kind.”4 This is important for me as on one hand, it figured out the

difficult question of “what after the event” so early and so smartly as the same approach was always being copied in the future expositions without any exception, on the other hand, this approach raised another much bigger question about what is the meaning, purpose or effect of such mega-event in human society, especially as it both emerged and disappeared so quickly, almost like a snapshot or a bubble.

1

Martin Müller (2015) What makes an event a mega-event? Definitions and sizes, Leisure Studies, 34:6, 627-642

2

Catalogue of the British Section. Containing a List of the Exhibitors of the United Kingdom and Its Colonies, and the Objects which They Exhibit.

3

Ibid.

4 Ibid.

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Maurice Roche, in his book ‘Mega-event and modernity’, has tried to find part of the answer. “Everyone loves a parade, as the saying goes. At least, governments and the powerful often hope that we do.”5 This is the first sentence of his book. He supported this argument with observations in personal level and national historical level. In the former one, he observed the fact that “people in modern large-scale complex societies,…reflect on and periodize their biographies in relation to the …great public events which affected them during the course of their live”6 . He then brings in the quick change of tastes in fashion(music, art, dresses, etc) between successive generations into this discourse, implying that we constantly rely on something(fashion in this case) to construct both smaller groups and the social identity. He finally addressed that “people do the same sort of identity-work using megaevents as temporal and cultural markers. This is true in relation both to expos and expo type events.”7 In the national historical level, he argues that the staging of international mega-events tells the story of a nation, representing a key occasion in which “nations could construct and present images of themselves for recognition in relation to other nations and ‘in the eyes of the world’.”8 Overall, I would assume that for both state and the public, such events serve as an opportunity to display themselves in front of others and to construct collective identity/memory together with others.

5 Maurice Roche. (2000). Mega-events and modernity(Olympics and expos in the growth of global culture). Routledge, p1 6 Ibid, p2 7 Ibid 8 Ibid, p3

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The Expo 70’ The huge success of the first great exposition set a profitable model for the host countries, the sponsors and the general public, which had then been copied multiple times in various amount of countries. However, It is not until 22 November of 1928 that an organization has been created, The Bureau international des exposition (BIE), in order to supervise and regulate such conventions formally and globally. It is after the funding of the organization that more diverse countries began to enter the family of great exposition, some as the main hosts and some as participants, providing these position used to be dominated by European countries. In1965, the BIE made an important decision to open its door to Asia, and Japan had been luckily chosen as the first asian country to hold an international exposition. This exposition, one of the most famous, successful and provocative in the hundred years of expo history, is the Osaka Expo’70.

As almost every expo starts from simple and strong statement, the Expo’70 is not an exception. According to the official record, it is “To the infinite future unfolding before us. To concentrate world’s energies. To pursue ‘Progress and Harmony for mankind.”9, three sentences in bold font. It worth a while to understand them together with the manifestos in order to capture the reason behind such particular voice from the host. In the manifesto, the first half of the text was used to elaborate their awareness or understanding of what does the expo mean to the general public and in which way it is creating such meaning. “The events have played an important role in advancing the civilization of man, by collectively exhibiting the products of creative activity undertaken at the time by the people of the world, for all to see and ascertain the progress made to date…”10 This

understanding of expo, I would say, is generally agreed at that time. However, in the following text the manifesto began to introduce Osaka’s own ambition about the expo, it stated that “Our 1970 Exposition should indicate the progress made by modern civilization, and at the same time mark a turning point toward the development of a still better mode of living for future mankind.”11 It is obvious from the statement that Osaka appreciated the

conventional way of displaying manufactured artefacts in expo but were not satisfied with the fact that not much projection about the future was being physically presented in previous events. Though without solid evidence, I would assume that Osaka recognized the limitation of the traditional way as the overwhelming focus on existing artefacts might not fully excavated the potential. Therefore, they assumed that by using it as an opportunity to not only dream about the future but also produce tangible material in a futuristic mindset, the Expo’70 would be able to engage with the public in a new way. The manifesto ended beautifully saying that “The grandeur of civilization built up by man through thousands of years of his history inspires us with awe when we turn our minds forward to imagine what might be in store for us in the infinite future unfolding before us…. And the

9 Expo '70. (Japan World Exposition, Osaka, 1970. L'exposition japonaise universelle et internationale.). Japan Association for the 1970 World Exposition (OSAKA). Osaka, [1966]

10 Ibid, p5 11 Ibid, p7

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advance of civilization is still quickening its pace, promising for future mankind a mode of living far surpassing all present imagination.”12

However, this radical position and clear vision Osaka addressed was not coming from any fantasy. Their emphasize on “harmony” and “future”, for me represented the country’s attitude towards the new world order, giving that Japan was then torn by virulent protests against the U.S.-Japan security treaty and the Vietnam war. It was at a crucial moment for the country to engage and repair its relationship with its citizens and the outside world. In this sense, the internationally participated Expo 70’ was obviously the best opportunity.

The decision was released on September 14, 1965 from the international Bureau of Exhibitions in Paris, which means that Japan had been given five years to prepare for this event. The response from the host was efficient, on October 15, 1965, with the authorization of Japan government, the Japanese Exposition Association was founded, composed of 52 directors and two auditors. The directors managing the Exposition have been chosen from among governmental, financial, cultural and labor circles. Then multiple sites across the whole continent of Japan had been proposed and contested collectively, coming up with the decision locating the international exhibition in Osaka. As the second largest city in the country, Osaka was chosen because of its cultural, commercial and industrial importance for the Kinki region, and also because of the population cradle in this area. Following the same process, the exposition association compared the possible sites in Osaka region and finally announce that the world exposition was to be held in the Senri Hills, “only six miles from downtown Osaka, and about 20 miles from Kyoto and Kobe….The exposition grounds cover a total of 815 acres, the Senri Hills area is covered with pine forest and bamboo groves and stands about 230 feet above sea level at the highest point.” 13

First focusing on the master plan of the exposition from Architect Kenzo Tange, he had divided the site into two part - inner ground and outer ground. In the inner ground there were Symbol area, net exhibition area, Plazas and road, recreation area, green area, artificial ponds and in the outer ground sat the parking lot, gates and terminal, Osaka central loop way, which intersected at right angles by the symbol area. Overall, the distribution strategy followed the theme of the exposition will be organized so that it forms a forum for better understanding among peoples of the world, in other words, it was designed to become “a melting pot of regional and ideological differences.”14 The exposition grounds could, in a sense, be likened to a Roman colosseum in their formation, as the symbol area, the core of the exposition was situated in the centre of the grounds. It was a combination of the Japanese festival grounds and the Greek forum and ideally it would be a place for communication, performances and audience participation events. The plaza was canopied with a huge roof to shut out rain and the heat of summer. Four subject themes - Towards fuller enjoyment of life / Towards more bountiful fruits from nature/ Towards fuller engineering of our living environment/ Towards better understanding of each others - evolve out of the Central Theme will be expressed in exhibits along moving

roads radiating in four directions from the Symbol area, to the north, south, east and west. “The roads will be roofed and have air curtains. At night they will be brightly lighted, and cool air will circulate through them in the summer.”15 Furthermore, the general exhibition area was placed around the ponds that stretch from east to

west in a V shape while the recreation area was placed along the northern boundary(Japanese traditional garden corporate with the pond) and another at the southernmost(playground for both kids and adults).

From my point of view, it is the transporting system and the Artificial climate that Osaka Expo provided for both the participating countries and the visitors that imposingly demonstrated its attitude towards the future and clearly constructed an image of the “Science Fiction” Japan. To be more specific, the road system was designed to achieve the ambitious but accurate goal of smoothly transporting 421,000 visitors and staff per day across the site without traffic jam. To achieve this, in outer ground a giant parking lot capable of 12 Ibid, p15 13 Ibid, p16 14 Ibid, p7 15 Ibid, p17

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accommodate 20,000 automobiles and 1,000 buses was implemented and in inner ground, a total lengths of 3.4 miles of moving roads with adjustable speed(slow-speed mode during most of the daytime and moderatespeed mode when it encounters hill and rush-hour) was built to carry 15,000 visitors an hour. It is accompanied with the then world’s largest air conditioning system for exposition site which replaced the separate and costly installations of cooling equipment in individual buildings. The central plant that installed underground in the symbol area would cool the water to 41 degrees, then pumping them out to create the artificial climate everywhere - “Artificial winds, mist, rain, thunderstorm and scents.”16 This two infrastructure level innovations were then being abused in not only the later expos but also large amount of public designs in Japan, proving the domestic and global influence of the Osaka exposition.

Although Japan had set a relatively refined framework for the participating countries, it still left enough room for them to construct their own unique national image and taking advantage of such event to advertise or display their ambitions. Taking America pavilion as an example, as the by then largest inflating structure over the globe, it demonstrated an specific and carefully designed image to the world visitors attending such event. The effort US government spent on it would be easily understood if putting into a bigger picture as during and at the fresh end of the Cold War, “the US government used architecture and exhibition design to communicate a robust sense of America’s national identity and values to tens of millions of visitors at international exhibitions and World’s Fairs around the world.”17 words from the Massey Archives. Back to the design, the U.S.

Pavilion at EXPO features one of the first air supported cable roofs. Super-elliptical in shape and spanning 262 by 460 ft, the roof employs cables 20 feet on centre and arrayed in a diamond pattern. There is no central tension ring. From the ground-level image we can see that the pavilion was partially sunk into the ground and roofed by the largest clear-span air-supported cable roof ever built. The fibre glass roof provided filtered natural light by day, and glowed at night. The fabric weighed one pound per square foot was kept inflated by an internal pressure of three-hundredths of a pound per square inch above the outside atmospheric pressure. This magnificent dome design, perceived by the collaboration between architect Davis Brody Bond and exhibit designers, Charmayeff & Geismar, was mainly considered as the best solution to overcome the typhoon problem with extremely low cost, in other words, it was a technological breakthrough of a specific problem. I agree with part of such description as there was no doubt that the design of US pavilion emerge from an ‘problem-solving approach’, but by looking at the first and the second iterations of the architect’s design, I would argue that he prioritized the responsibility of using the pavilion to construct a space-age image of the United States at first. Even in the final design where the idea of pavilion as a moon surface has completely disappeared, the roof material, the air pressure concept and the cable-supported structure were still empowered by the cutting edge space technology developed by United States. This was accompanied by the interior major exhibits under the general heading “ Image of America”, where the iconic Apollo 11 and one piece of big rock from the moon were hanging in the centre of the pavilion.

16 Ibid, p7 17 Massey Archive. Introduction

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The “Panasonic Time Capsule” As discussed above, the great exposition from its very beginning is defined as an one-off event, so as the Osaka Expo’70. It attracted global attention and attendance for a period of 6 months time and then the event blended into the background together with its structures. Few selected artefacts would be preserved, such as the elm tree of the British Great Exposition and the tower of sun sculpture piece of the Osaka Expo 70’, however, there was one special artefact created during the Expo’70 period that had been preserved extremely well - the Panasonic time-capsule. Instead of being preserved to mark an event, this time-capsule was preserved to memorize an era, buried 50 meters deep under the ground, waiting to be reopened in 5,000 years.

The idea of putting together a time capsule was first raised by The Mainichi Newspapers in May, 1967, two years after the announcement of BIE. At the same time, Matsushita Electric Industrial Company was also considering making something for its 50th anniversary in 1968. The two groups came together to officially announce the “Time Capsule Expo ’70 project” on January 8th, 1968. After series of proposals and discussions, the project turned out to be producing Dual capsule, which means that one capsule should be periodically unearthed, inspected and reburied, and one should be left in-disturbed for 5000 years. A technical committee made up of 23 leading Japanese scientist and academics, 27 experts in the sciences, social studies and arts was formed to progress this project. As time capsule was defined as deliberate attempts to record the present for the benefit of mankind in the far distant future, in the planning and preparation of Time Capsule Expo ’70, its ultimate goal was always to “pass on a vivid and complete picture of life today, including its best and worst aspects, its triumphs and its tragedies to the far distant future.”18 The committee has spend lots of time on analyzing the society at that moment, realizing that “the average Japanese family possessed most of the gadgets of a labour-saving society”, in other words every domestic convenience was available and made affordable through mass production. However, for most Japanese, the small pleasure of life still lie in traditional things like “the comfort of a cotton kimono on a warm summer evening, the feel of tatami mats under the feet, simple Japanese food, a tiny garden viewed from the verandah.” 19 This situation was precisely described in the Expo 70’ site where visitors saw towering ultra-modern constructions of steel and plastic stood alongside graceful wooden pavilions and water gardens, and also could be seen in Japanese streets serene old houses rub shoulders with concrete apartment buildings offering all the conveniences of modern life. By recognizing this situation, the committee intend to treat the traditional Japanese side and the modern development as equally as possible by including the typical artefacts from both sides. It was then decided that the objects should fall into the following categories: “Records of contemporary civilization including our legacy from the past/ Records relating specifically to Japan, ancient and modern/ Objects representative of contemporary life.”20 By the end of August, 1968, 327 objects had been suggested by Japanese respondents and 78 by non

Japanese. Altogether, 1024 recommendations were received from outside the committees. In November, 1968, the newspaper opened the floor to asking for public suggestions. A total of 116324 suggestion were received, 7652 suggestions were entirely new. Then after much careful thought, adjustment and readjustment, the selection group proposed 2068 items to the committee, “759 of these were objects and 1309 were items to be recorded on tape, film and phonograph records.”21 The time capsule project won strong support from the Japanese society and found no difficulty in collecting the listed artefacts, which later being carefully treated with the most advanced preservation technology at that time. After three years long process, the capsule finally took shape right before the inauguration of Expo 70’. There were three group of the identical dual time capsule being produced, one displayed in the Japanese pavilion, one donated to the Osaka museum and the final one group buried underground.

18 The Official record of Time Capsule Expo’70. Publisher Kadoma, Osaka : Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd, 1980.

19 Ibid, p3 20 Ibid, p4 21 Ibid

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Although very different in scale and strategy etc, I found one obvious similarity between the small timecapsule project and the mega Osaka expo. It is their share interests in collecting, centralizing and celebrating artefacts. For me, the success of time-capsule project was due to its seriousness from the committee inside and the strong support it got from the outside. The group of expertise who executed this project have welldesigned criteria in all process and each step they went through was a result of multiple proposals and careful discussions. It’s also striking to realize that how heavily the Japanese public was engaged in this small project revealed by the number of suggestions they provided for the committee. Then looking at the Osaka expo, in a sense it appeared to me a scaled up version of the time capsule, where large physical artefacts occupied the pavilions and the pavilion themselves became artefacts. The involvement of the public was also scaled up. In one sentence, both cases revealed the fact that we are obsessed with not only manipulating and creating stuff but also enjoy displaying and looking at them, considering artefacts as a significant achievements of our species. I would then argue that the most fundamental driving force for Great Exposition to flourish in the past 200 years lies on neither the successful business model, nor on the past or future possibility it embodied, but on human’s inborn ability to both create and appreciate artefacts, regardless of the scale. We love to make them, and we enjoy looking at them.

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The possible answers In conclusion, I would argue that the success of world expositions is credit to the following reasons: Firstly for the organizers, it provides power elites with 'flagships' and catalysts to promote their visions of society and of the future, at the same time set up elaborated stage for them to engage with their own citizens and outer world; Secondly for the ordinary people, it provides them with opportunities to connect with and affirm or contest collective identities; Last but not least, it’s core content and theme- the celebration of human produced artefacts- have been proven to be eternally charming.

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