Photos courtesy of BRC Imagination Arts.
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| Theme: Rise to the Challenge |
Client: Shanghai Expo 2010 |
| Fabrication: Kingsmen Creatives Ltd. |
Design: BRC Imagination Arts |
| Size: 60,000 square feet |
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Exterior Design: A modernist take on the American bald eagle, the United States’ pavilion with its battleship-gray exterior offers a geometric interpretation of the patriotic symbol — but with twists of Green. A courtyard of trees next to a silent waterfall and reflecting pool cool the entrance area and hush the din of the surrounding expo. Using only recycled water throughout, the pavilion also features an urban vegetable garden on a rooftop terrace modeled after First Lady Michelle Obama’s White House garden. The Green roof offers collateral benefits of cooling the pavilion while slowly releasing captured rainwater for later reuse.
Pavilion Summary: Emphasizing how technology can help build bridges between distant peoples, the United States’ pavilion greets 2,500 visitors every hour with a video ”Overture” presentation on multiple large screens that offer a vocal “Welcome” in Mandarin. Once the presentation — in which politicians such as Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and celebrities with worldwide recognition like Kobe Bryant offer their greetings — is concluded, attendees experience the pavilion in three acts.
Act one, “The Spirit of America,” uses a trio of oversized screens as a canvas for a melting pot of Americans to remind guests of the power of imagination and collaboration, concluding with President Barak Obama calling for the United States and China to work together more closely. In a nearby theater, act two uses five “urban towers” — screens more than 30 feet tall, shaped like skyscrapers — positioned portrait style wherein a little girl transforms her urban-blighted neighborhood through her imagination. While the screens themselves appear to morph into buildings, windows, bus stops, old-time movie screens, and more, actual wind and rain from strategically placed fans and misters buffet and spritz the audience. At the end of the dialog-free story, a city once desolate becomes a vision of what can happen when optimism meets innovation. Act three consists of four themed areas using static presentations to accentuate what Americans are doing to help their communities become more sustainable and pioneer new technologies, with presentations by corporate giants such as Chicago-based The Boeing Co. and The Procter & Gamble Co. of Cincinnati.
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