Friday, March 26, 2010

A Sneak Peak at the Shanghai Expo 2010: Part II

By far the most visually stunning expo at this stage of construction is the UK Pavilion. The porcupine-like spines of acrylic protruding from the construction includes over 6000 seeds that will be left behind to local schools after the expo as a legacy. It is one of the smaller structures, but it is one of the most unique structures I have ever seen! Looks like something out of Star Wars!

The Spanish Pavilion is also very cool, covered in straw mats. I wish I knew all the inspirations and their design choice behind all the buildings! Actually, I wish the expo opened now so I can look inside all these amazing buildings! Nonetheless, it is such a rare opportunity to see the expo at this stage of the game. Before the hundreds of thousands of people surround you trying to take the pictures of the same things.

I was very happy to see the Canada Pavilion! For some reason, I thought it was very Canadian. It was colossal compared to other buildings, and it was covered in wood. No doubt imported from British Columbia :D It looks largely completed with the sign already up in English and Chinese.

The USA Pavilion has an embarrassing story behind it. I read online in western and local articles that the Americans didn't have enough resources to attend the Shanghai Expo and originally chose not to build a pavilion here. But the Chinese didn't want USA to miss this world event since the states are a prominent country in the world, so the local government and Chinese Americans in the states raised funds for a pavilion next to ours. However, it is rather unspectacular and resembles a shopping mall.

The Polish Pavilion was also another nice one that is basically finished. The Luxembourg, the Qatar, the German, and the Swiss pavilions all looked pretty cool, but they were still in various stages of construction and uploading via email is quite slow. Perhaps I will add it in, in a later addition to this post.

Among the many workers were thousands of troops. Men and women. Dressed in full dessert camo. Quite a sight actually. Something that we would never see in Canada.


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1 comment:

  1. visual overload!

    can you go touch one of those needles?? hehehe

    ReplyDelete