Cool World Expo Pavilion

By Lisa August 13th, 2009

I don’t know much about world expos—in fact, I didn’t realize there was one in the planning. However next year in Shanghai, China the next expo will be held and it will showcase innovative solutions to common urban problems. That would be interesting enough, but what really caught my eye was the Polish Pavilion. The Polish architects wanted to take a traditional national “ideogram” and reflect it in their building. I had to look up “ideogram” to find out that it is a written character symbolizing the idea of a thing without using the sounds used to say it- numerals or Chinese figures for example. The architects chose paper cutouts as their ideogram of choice. The cutouts reflect play, daily life in the fields and even ceremonies. The shape of the building looks like a piece of folded paper. And at night…just look at the pictures! Talk about unexpected!