| Window of the City Pavilion |
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Photos courtesy of J.M. Lin Architect/The Observer Design Group
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Producer: Arts International Association/Shanghai Media Group
Theme: “Balancity: A City in Balance”
Fabrication: Wonders of Art International Ltd. |
Client: Expo 2010, Shanghai, China
Design: Shanghai Media Group/J.M. Lin Architect/The Observer Design Group
Size: 63,000 square feet |
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Exterior Design: Set in a 63,000-square-foot, eye-shaped pavilion with a Tiffany-blue roof, “Window of the City” is Expo 2010’s official presentation, charged with artistically interpreting the fair’s theme of ”Better City, Better Life.” As many as 2,000 visitors seated around a 360-degree stage watch a fairytale-like story of a young girl who, eking out a lonesome existence alongside jet-setting parents traveling to London; Paris; New York; Sydney, Australia; and Osaka, Japan (all former expo sites), finally settles in Shanghai. There she encounters an angel who whisks her through time to see how cities, from the Stone Age to the concrete age, help people build lives and find love.
Pavilion Summary: The presentation’s “Aesop’s Fables”-simplicity is balanced by the circular stage’s technological sophistication. A transparent 66-foot-tall screen surrounds the stage’s periphery, giving the presentation a look and feel that is half Imax, half snow globe.
Positioned on the stage inside the curtain-screen is a one-of-a-kind 30-by-33-foot LED-covered structure. Resembling a massive Rubik’s Cube divided into seven columns and four rows of smaller, individual cubes, the LED structure’s separate sections combine with the gauze-like curtain to act as a perpetually moving backdrop and projection surface that enhance the 40-minute musical. While projectors cast shimmering images and Impressionist-soft colors on the diaphanous curtain encircling the stage, the LED screens spin horizontally and vertically, running film footage, animations, and still pictures as the performers morph from shambling cavemen to hiphopping New Yorkers. Meanwhile, up to 36 “angels” flit and whirl 33 feet above the stage on a lattice of computer-controlled cables so complex, each individual wire has software written for it to ensure perfect synchronization and avoid mid-air collisions.
Perhaps the most highly attended presentation in World Expo history, “Window of the City” has left more than 1 million attendees stage struck.
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