Hot on the heels of its success at Milan’s recent biennial architecture and building construction show, Building the Expo – an exhibition staged jointly by MADE expo and the Milan Polytechnic – has set off for Shanghai, to give Chinese faculty members and students (mostly engineers, architects and designers) a close-up view of the technology and engineering and architectural know-how behind the self-built and corporate pavilions at Expo 2015.
As part of an initiative entitled “Experience Italian Culture”, organised by the University of Tongji (Shanghai) Museum and Library, Building the Expo aims to highlight the complex design, materials, components and technology that have gone into the pavilions, with a special focus on the links between design and national identity, and on how such transient constructions might eventually be recovered and repurposed.
Present at the inauguration were Professor Wu Zhiqiang, Vice President of Tongji University and Chief Planner of the master plan of Expo Shanghai 2010, Italian Vice Consul Gabriele De Stefano, the curator of the exhibit Professor Luisa Collina, and its designer, the architect Matteo Scagnol, among others. Due to run in Shanghai until the end of June, Building the Expo represents a bridge between the Universal Expositions of Shanghai and Milan; in fact at the inauguration it was emphasised that the event was a starting point for thinking about the future of the pavilions, and the ideas embedded in them, after the end of the expo.
The success of the initiative reflects MADE expo’s unrelenting commitment towards fostering the culture of sustainable building construction throughout the world, and undoubtedly ranks the event as one of the world’s leading architecture and construction shows.
The next MADE expo will take place in March 2017.
