Expo '70
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The or Expo '70 was a
world's fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition, is a large global exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specific site for a perio ...
held in Suita,
Osaka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Osaka Prefecture has a population of 8,778,035 () and has a geographic area of . Osaka Prefecture borders Hyōgo Prefecture to the northwest, Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Nara ...
, Japan, between 15 March and 13 September 1970. Its theme was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese, Expo '70 is often referred to as . It was the first world's fair held in Japan and in Asia. The Expo was designed by Japanese architect Kenzō Tange, assisted by 12 other Japanese architects. Bridging the site along a north–south axis was the Symbol Zone. Planned on three levels, it was primarily a social space with a unifying
space frame In architecture and structural engineering, a space frame or space structure (Three-dimensional space, 3D truss) is a rigid, lightweight, truss-like structure constructed from interlocking struts in a geometry, geometric pattern. Space frames can ...
roof. The Expo attracted international attention for the extent to which unusual artworks and designs by Japanese avant-garde artists were incorporated into the overall plan and individual national and corporate pavilions. The most famous of these artworks is artist Tarō Okamoto's iconic Tower of the Sun, which remains on the site.


Background

Osaka was chosen as the site for the 1970 World Exposition by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in 1965. 330 hectares in the Senri Hills outside Osaka had been earmarked for the site and a Theme Committee under the chairmanship of Seiji Kaya was formed. Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama were appointed to produce the master plan for the Expo. The main theme would be ''Progress and Harmony for Mankind''. Tange invited 12 other architects to elucidate designs for elements within the master plan. These architects included: Arata Isozaki for the ''Festival Plaza'' mechanical, electrical and electronic installations; and
Kiyonori Kikutake (April 1, 1928 – December 26, 2011) was a prominent Japanese architect known as one of the founders of the Japanese Metabolist group. He was also the tutor and employer of several important Japanese architects, such as Toyo Ito, Shōzō ...
for the Landmark Tower.


Master plan

Two main principles informed the master plan. The first was the idea that the wisdom of all the peoples of the world would come together in this place and stimulate ideas; the second was that it would be less of an ''exposition'' and more of a ''festival''. The designers thought that unlike previous expositions they wished to produce a central, unifying, Festival Plaza where people could meet and socialise. They called this the ''Symbol Zone'' and covered it and the themed pavilions with a giant space frame roof. The designers liked the idea that like the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, the roof of the Symbol Zone could be a unifying entity for the expo. They did not want the constraint imposed by the London Exhibition of having everything contained under one roof, so the space frame contained only the Festival Plaza and themed pavilions. Tange compared the concept to a tree. The idea was that although the national pavilions were like individual flowers they needed to be connected to the whole via branches and a trunk. Thus the Symbol Zone became the trunk and the moving pedestrian walkways and sub-plazas became the branches. These elements were reinforced with colour, with the trunk and branches in plain white and the pavilions in their own colours that were determined by the national architects. The Symbol Zone ran north–south across the site, spanning an arterial road running east–west. The Festival Plaza was to the north of road and had the main gate on its southern end. To the north of the main gate and central to the Festival Plaza was the Tower of the Sun from which visitors could join pedestrian walkways that travelled out towards the north, south, east and west gates. The Theme Space under the space frame was divided into three levels, each designed by the artist Tarō Okamoto, The underground level represented the past and was a symbol of the source of humanity. The surface level represented the present, symbolising the dynamism of human interaction. The space frame represented the future and a world where humanity and technology would be joined. Tange envisioned that the exhibition for the future would be like an aerial city and he asked Fumihiko Maki, Noboru Kawazoe, Koji Kamiya and Noriaki Kurokawa to design it. The Theme Space was also punctuated by three towers: the Tower of the Sun, the Tower of Maternity and the Tower of Youth. To the north of the Theme Space was the Festival Plaza. This was a flexible space that contained a flat area and stepped terrace. The plaza could be rearranged to provide for different requirements for seating capacity, from 1500 to 10000. The flexibility extended to the lighting and audio visual equipment allowing for a range of musical performances and electronic presentations. Festival Plaza was covered by the world's first large-scale, transparent membrane roof. It was designed by Tange and structural engineer Yoshikatsu Tsuboi + Kawaguchi & Engineers. Measuring 75.6 m in width and 108 m in length, it was 30 m high and supported by only six lattice columns. Seventy-seven countries participated in the event, and within six months the number of visitors reached 64,218,770, making Expo '70 one of the largest and best attended expositions in history. It held the record for most visitors at an Expo until it was surpassed by the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. It generated a profit of 19 billion Yen.


Major pavilions

* The Canadian pavilion, designed by architect Arthur Erickson, featured two
National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; ) is a Canadian public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and altern ...
productions: ''The Land'', a look at Canada from coast to coast, filmed for the most part from a low-flying aircraft, as well as the animated short ''The City'', directed by Kaj Pindal. Montreal artist and architect Melvin Charney had submitted a radically different design for the Canadian pavilion, fashioned from construction cranes and scaffolding, which was rejected. * The West German pavilion, designed by Fritz Bornemann, featured the world's first spherical concert hall, based on artistic concepts by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The pavilion theme was "gardens of music", in keeping with which Bornemann "planted" the exhibition halls beneath a broad lawn, with the connected auditorium "sprouting" above ground. Inside, the audience was surrounded by 50 loudspeaker groups in seven rings at different "latitudes" around the interior walls of the sphere. Sound was sent around the space in three dimensions using either a spherical controller designed by Fritz Winckel of the Electronic Music Studio at Technische Universität Berlin, or a ten-channel "rotation mill" constructed to Stockhausen's design. Works by
Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (German: Help:IPA/Standard German, joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety ...
,
Ludwig van Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...
,
Bernd Alois Zimmermann Bernd Alois Zimmermann (20 March 1918 – 10 August 1970) was a German composer. He is perhaps best known for his opera ''Die Soldaten'', which is regarded as one of the most important German operas of the 20th century, after those of Berg. Hi ...
, and Boris Blacher were played from multi-track tape. As the main feature, however, Stockhausen was invited to present five-and-a-half-hour live programs of his music every day over a period of 183 days to a total audience of about a million listeners. In the course of the exhibition, 19 performers in Stockhausen's ensemble gave concerts for over a million visitors. "Many visitors felt the spherical auditorium to be an oasis of calm amidst the general hubbub, and after a while it became one of the main attractions of Expo 1970". * The USSR pavilion was the tallest in the fairgrounds, a sweeping red and white design by Soviet architect Mikhail V. Posokhin. * The U.S. pavilion was an air-supported dome, a joint design by architects Davis Brody and structural engineer David H. Geiger * The Netherlands pavilion was the work of Carel Weeber and Jaap Bakema. * The Hong Kong pavilion, topped by sails that were raised and lowered twice daily, was designed by Alan Fitch, W. Szebo & Partners. * The Philippine Pavilion was designed by renowned Filipino Architect Leandro Locsin and was very well received and was judged as one of the ten most popular pavilions at the exhibition with its dramatic roof sweeping up from the ground using fine Philippine hardwoods and other native materials.


Other attractions

A popular highlight of the fair was a large Moon rock on display in the United States' pavilion. It had been brought back from the Moon by Apollo 12 astronauts in 1969. Expo '70 also saw the premiere of the first-ever
IMAX IMAX is a proprietary system of High-definition video, high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and movie theater, theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (image), aspect ratio (approximately ei ...
film: the
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-produced '' Tiger Child'' for the Fuji Group pavilion. The Expo also featured demonstrations of conveyor belt sushi, early
mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...
s,
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ing and
maglev Maglev (derived from '' magnetic levitation'') is a system of rail transport whose rolling stock is levitated by electromagnets rather than rolled on wheels, eliminating rolling resistance. Compared to conventional railways, maglev trains h ...
train technology.


After the fair


Today

The site of Expo '70 is now Expo Commemoration Park. Almost all pavilions have been demolished, but a few memorials remain, including part of the roof for Festival Plaza designed by Tange. The most famous of the still-intact pieces is the Tower of the Sun. The former international art museum pavilion designed by Kiyoshi Kawasaki was used as the building for the National Museum of Art, Osaka until March 2004 (the museum moved to downtown Osaka in November 2004). Additionally, there is a time capsule that is to be left for 5,000 years and opened in the year 6970. The capsule was donated by The Mainichi Newspapers Co. and the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. The concept creating time capsules at world's fairs started with the two Westinghouse Time Capsules, which are to be opened in 6939. Part of the Expo Commemoration Park is now ExpoCity, a shopping mall that features the Redhorse Osaka Wheel. Osaka successfully bid for Expo 2025 alongside
Yekaterinburg Yekaterinburg (, ; ), alternatively Romanization of Russian, romanized as Ekaterinburg and formerly known as Sverdlovsk ( ; 1924–1991), is a city and the administrative centre of Sverdlovsk Oblast and the Ural Federal District, Russia. The ci ...
,
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
, and
Baku Baku (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Azerbaijan, largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the List of capital ci ...
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Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...
. However, the world's fair will not reuse the park space, and will instead be hosted on Yumeshima island in Konohana, on the waterfront of Osaka Bay.


50th anniversary

To celebrate the 50th anniversary, "Expo '70 50th Anniversary Special Exhibition" was held in Tennozu area of Tokyo from February 15 to 24, 2020. Osaka Monorail operated a wrapping train that reproduced the monorail design that operated at the Expo to commemorate the anniversary.


In popular culture

Expo '70 appears in Shōwa nostalgia fiction, where it is used as a symbol of the financial prosperity of Shōwa era Japan. For example, Expo '70 plays a central role in the plot of the Naoki Urasawa's manga '' 20th Century Boys''; and various Expo '70 pastiches are featured in '' Crayon Shin-chan: The Storm Called: The Adult Empire Strikes Back''. *Expo '70 is the setting for the Daiei Motion Picture Company production of Noriaki Yuasa's '' Gamera vs. Jiger'' (1970), which was extensively filmed on location at the Expo grounds. The final battle between the monsters takes place at the Expo site. The film was marketed overseas as ''Monsters Invade Expo '70''. *''
Kamen Rider The , also known as ''Masked Rider Series'' (until ''Kamen Rider Decade, Decade'' and except Thailand), is a Japanese superhero fiction, superhero media franchise consisting of tokusatsu television programs, films, manga, and anime, created by ...
'' episode 7 was filmed on the fairgrounds of Expo '70. *Director Douglas Trumbull stated that the design of the space freighter ''Valley Forge'' in the 1971 science fiction drama '' Silent Running'' was inspired by the Expo Landmark Tower. *Expo '70 is the main setting for the Canadian director Robert Lepage's 1998 film entitled '' '', based on his play ''The Seven Branches of the River Ota''. *Expo '70 is the climax setting for the Tamil film '' Ulagam Sutrum Valiban'' directed by M. G. Ramachandran. *
Expo '70 The or Expo '70 was a world's fair held in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, between 15 March and 13 September 1970. Its theme was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese, Expo '70 is often referred to as . It was the first world's fair ...
is an experimental psychedelic drone musical act from Kansas City, Missouri led by Justin Wright (2003–present). *Expo '70 is referenced in Yasuo Ohtagaki's manga ''Moonlight Mile'', as the protagonist Gorou comes from Suita. *Expo '70 is referenced in the 2012 novel '' Miracles of the Namiya General Store'' by Keigo Higashino.


See also

* List of world's fairs * Osaka Expo '70 Stadium * Expo Commemoration Park * Expoland * Expo '90 * Expo 2025 * 1970 Tenroku gas explosion


References


Footnotes


Sources

* * * * *


External links


Official website

Expo'70

Official website of the BIETime Capsule Expo '70"Spherical Concert Hall"
photos and architectural plans of the auditorium of the West German pavilion and its sound system {{Authority control 1970 in Japan Tourist attractions in Osaka Prefecture Culture in Osaka Electronic music festivals in Japan Electroacoustic music festivals 1970 festivals 1970 music festivals