Design Observer Lawrence Vale gives an extensive report of the Shanghai Expo 2010. Here’s his take on the Vancouver pavillion:
Just adjacent to Mecca, in Expo’s geography of Urban Best Practices, is Vancouver. Housed in an elegant structure of laminated beams, the display emphasizes the value of Canadian wood products more than the remarkable urbanism of the British Columbian metropolis, no doubt reflecting the economics of sponsorship.
In a seemingly direct rebuke to the concretification of Shanghai, the exhibit warns that “concrete is heavy, brittle, and rigid,” and that “when subjected to seismic forces, can crack and crumble, endangering lives.”
By contrast, Canada’s “sustainably managed forests” offer a renewable alternative. Unfortunately, as if to underscore the futility of the enterprise, the display is juxtaposed with a view of neighboring concrete tower blocks. Which actually serves as a reminder that the whole Expo landscape, seemingly vast as it is, is dwarfed by the massive sprawl of Shanghai itself, where literally thousands of towers have sprouted in just the last two decades, transforming the rice paddies of Pudong into the world’s most dramatic skyscraper landscape.
Urban Best Practices Area, where Vancouver wood meets Shanghai concrete.
