I was going to post this yesterday but I couldn't find the architects' name anywhere and as I was searching for it, I got into different things and lost my train of thought (anatomy of news post making.;.)
Thanks Liebchen.
The building sucks. It represents the US as corporate nation of the unimaginative kind!

i can't believe we're OK with no reference/credit to architect here, no matter how mediocre and corporate the effort.

For those of you wondering who the architect is, it's BRC Imaginary Arts. How embarrassing. Here's a press release.

So the Danish Pavilion by BIG is this witty, fun, daring, totally awesome cultural exchange program building, and the US goes with a corporate plop by a branding firm?

Lovely. American ingenuity is down the crapper.

LB, totally agree. so sad that the effort to fundraise and the relationship between the US and china are more newsworthy than the actual significance of the design and event.

here's the US one:
http://www.blooloop.com/Article/World-Expos-USA-Pavilion-Groundbreaking-in-Shanghai/149

clearly the 20th century was the US century for world expos. these days our international expertise lies in security fences and sovereign country invasions.

The 2-story, 6,000 square meter pavilion will itself be sustainably built and energy efficient, and many of its components will be recycled or re-used after the expo. It will have an urban farm on its roof.

Whoop-de-fucking-woo.

The USA is truly a dominant world leader in......tossing around hot empty catchphrases, apparently.

BTW, thanks for the link from which I cadged that quote, superinteresting!

Local surveys show that even before this announcement, already over 60% of the Shanghai residents ranked the USA Pavilion as one of the top pavilions they want to see. This is an opportunity and a responsibility. As a country and as an economy, we must not disappoint. The US simply must have a pavilion and it must be great...

...'Expos are our sweet spot'

aw shucks. done f***ed up a good opportunity.

let's see... BRC's abortion @ the 2005 expo was... a horrible abstract US flag - how effing banal and pathetic!


but not to worry, with these clowns designing the pavilion - it's bound to be a success like the DK pavilion, right?

the u.s. pavilion costs over 2x what the danish pavilion is slated for...

BRC designed 2 pavilions for the expo.

here is the other, the information + communication pavilion

Maybe she could borrow some of her hubbys stash left over from the new orleans fundraising?

it ain't much better but i like the the information + communication pavilion better than the other.

Looks a little less like a corporate office.

i'm going to go against the flow here, but what's all the hate for, exactly? the us pavilion has a corporate-looking rendering, sure, but i could imagine it rendered differently and we'd be more excited.

it's about promotion of us environmental ideas which - though possibly disingenuous - is certainly not bash-worthy.

now we hear that brc is responsible and we bash harder?! is this because it's not by a recognized star? if we heard that brc had hired (looking at the design...) pelli, eskew+, or tschumi would we bash it less? or more?

the information + communication pavilion looks like it could be interesting, possibly because the rendering style is more like what we're used to seeing, possibly because it seems familiar (e.g., un studio).

maybe the negativity is because we see brc as stealing work from architects? because if you dig deeper, you see it's probably not so. for previous pavilions brc has hired architects and these architects are credited on brc's website...probably better than most architects would credit our consultants on our websites. brc just happens to be the lead for these exhibit-dominant projects, marshalling all of the forces for a complete project.

what this signals to me is a positive inter-relation of disciplines. think of the different design-oriented folks that brc has to include to pull these things off! while the way they handle it may show off us production values (like movie production almost) more than architectural values, maybe that's what the global expo-attending public wants to see from us anyway? ingels is an architecture superstar, he teaches, he lectures, and he's very smart. but the folks from brc are working for a different - and larger - audience.

do we really think that this place will reflect badly on the us? or are we resentful because it's not architecture-centric?

I'm not resentful that it's not architecture-centric, I'm resentful that it's not challenging, progressive, or reaching for any new directions, NOR is it poetic, sublime, or profound, and on a purely aesthetic level, it represents the US as a corporate office culture.

Sustainable design and energy efficiency -and recyclable materials, especially for a temporary building! - should be status quo by now. That the US is trumpeting those things as features is embarrassing - it shows that we haven't thought beyond greenwash. And apparently those are the ONLY features we have to brag about with this structure - and that is bashworthy.

Maybe the exhibits inside will be awesome - I've done exhibit designs, I've worked with exhibit designers, certainly the dematerializing of material space into "experience" is valid for an Expo if anywhere - but what about the housing of that experience? If we're saying the US is really good at selling a dream (Hollywood, ideals, branding...) then why is the building a building at all? Why isn't it a version of the Blur Building, something that isn't really there, instead of this brawny dumb defensive lineman/big box theater?

Cross-discipline work is great, specialization is great, but in this case it doesn't add up to anything great. It's dull. The US is in a strange, difficult, conflicted spot right now, and this building, to me, shows we're intent on continuing to do things exactly as we already are.

Also, how is BRC working for a bigger audience when they and BIG are both designing for the same Expo? I don't understand that comment.

i really don't get it, honestly, this building by and large seems to represent the past and not the future, it seems to be a regurgitation of old ideas and mocking of thoughtful, integrated principles. you look at the BIG project, and there are clear, thought ideas, wonderful diagrams and sections, and a project connected to an identity of their country/client. this building by BRC reminds me of that tech center designed and built for Flint, MI; the one featured in Roger & Me. it was an anachronism, it was insulting, it was mocking in every way. for this brc project we have what, one rendering, and a rendering from so far away from the building as to almost make the building look irrelevant/blurry?

what BRC has proven, and their dossier shows this, is that they have ability and the connections to organize and lobby for this kind of project. here's hoping that the next US pavilion will have more involvement from the best and brightest from our country, and not from the "brightness" and "glitziest".

Many, many assumptions in the comments above. Yes, those poor saps at the NYT are real ass-kissers. What a disappointment. But they got a lot of the story wrong.

First, according to published accounts: BRC Imagination Arts did NOT design the pavilion structure. It designed the film that will show in the theater inside the pavilion and other attractions. The pavilion was designed by a Chinese "design" firm in 2008 with Chinese funding, replacing the Canadian architect who designed the movie marquee original structure. (See Fred Bernstein, "Worlds Away," in The Architects Newspaper, April 15, 2009, http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=3399.)

...And yes, it is a tepid, uninspiring building. It's contents will be equally so, mostly a food court presided over by Yum!, a fast-food conglomerate, and PepsiCo. This is because the US Pavilion site, intended to feature a construction that mirrored the Chinese Pavilion in its creativity -- a symbol of the two nations as future allies -- occupies a primo location for people who are entering the Expo or crossing from one district to another. Hot diggity dog (literally).

These are amusing details. The fundraising story is something else again.

• Inside dealings and conflicts of interest in both the Bush and Obama Administrations.

• A secret "action plan" dreamed up by the Bush Administration and enacted by this one -- kept secret by the State Department to this day -- that denies public funding so that corporations can buy the pavilion for political favors.

• And of course, the absolute lack of participation by the American people, who have been kept totally in the dark, in shaping what was supposed to be _their_ pavilion, speaking to the people of China and he world.

For more details about this unfolding story, which the NYT's pablum team completely (and deliberately) ignored, see Atlantic Monthly writer Adam Minter's blog entries on his outstanding _Shanghai Scrap_ journal:

"Lies, Damned Lies, and the US Pavilion at the Expo 2010," Jan 3, 2010
http://shanghaiscrap.com/?p=4344

and...

"US State Department Inspector General Refers Complaint Against USA Pavilion at Expo 2010 to Secretary of State's Executive Director," Jan 4, 2010
http://shanghaiscrap.com/?p=4332

According to commentators on Shanghai Scrap, the real scandals have yet to be revealed -- and the press is closing in. The real press, not the New York Times.

Thanks for that, Arturius. What a sad, sad story. I'm admittedly too simple-minded to really understand the entanglements of diplomacy, secret deals, and fund-raising, but I fall back to the comment I made above: this building, to me, shows we're intent on continuing to do things exactly as we already are.

Also: $61 million to spend and a year for construction? Simple as I am, I'm confident I could name, with help from other archinecters, a dozen young, awesome American design firms that could come up with a super-cool pavilion that could be built for 1/3 that price, leaving the remaining funds for one of our dozens of young, innovative media firms to create the super-cool immersive video etc. experience stuff on the interior.

What a shame.

i wondered why so many other pavilions were funded by the state (DK's is over 60% state-funded) and this one was funded by pepsi, GE, yum!, etc.

Steven, BRC (headed by Bob Rogers) is not a starchitect company, but amongst Exhibit designers, Bob Rogers is the star. Even though his designs suck, and have little or no relevance except the showmanship.

Having personally interacted with BRC, I would also like to say that Bob Rogers is an egotistical maniac of the worst kind. The only thing that BRC feeds off of is their relationship to The Walt Disney corporation.

By the way, the architects of the pavilion are Clive Grout architects "Architect Clive Grout of Clive Grout Architects also has numerous world's fair pavilions, beginning with Vancouver 86, among his numerous credits." Knowing BRC though, they will try to reduce the architectural shell to the bare minimum, and put most of the budget towards producing the show.

This example should really show the state of architecture in the US. It would have been even better if they had just farmed off the whole pavilion to the Walt Disney Corporation.

Sameolddoctor, Clive Grout _was_ the initial architect for the pavilion. His original Hollywood marquee design -- abstractly, a bald eagle, I kid you not -- was severely redone by an unnamed "design institute" in Shanghai. Bizarrely interesting in its grandiosity (spotlights and all), Grout's original design is now almost totally unrecognizable.

Likewise, the sustainability theme taken from the Expo's "Better City, Better Life" slogan, conscientiously applied to both the construction and the presentation in the proposal from another team that competed for the US Pavilion bid (aced out politically) is completely watered down.

The online "virtual pavilion" that was to complement the physical structure in the other team's proposal, turning it into a participatory global experience, has likewise been reduced to naught and may not exist at all by the time the "revisions" are accomplished. Why go global when your principal intent is to sell friend chicken and soda pop to the Chinese visitors?

(It's interesting how RFP competitors' good ideas, debased though they may be, are showing up in the current pavilion. One lesson: if you compete, don't count on the US government to protect your IP. Another: don't play with cheats.)

You are correct that the budget has been largely redistributed to the BRC presentation, an Alice in Wonderland-like revisiting of our world by a Chinese-American girl from the 2030s. Well, that will appeal to at least one group of attendees: Chinese-Americans. Among 70 million others. Follow the money.

i still don't think that what's shown in the rendering - all most of us knew about this project on 3 january - would automatically have resulted in a bad project. there appears to be some potential in it.

but i have to admit that, now that i've heard so much more about the full scenario, i was wrong to suggest that there was much to defend about the team and the process. sounds like a mess.

http://www.slate.com/id/2191032/
http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=3399


btw, did anyone check out the other pavilions from other countries? there are some howlers in there.

Howlers meaning bad?

The thatch-covered one - Spain? - looks really cool, but maybe I'm just in my thatch appreciation phase (see PS-1 by MOS) after taking one too many underwater basket weaving classes in college.

The big apple is silly, but fun, as is Happy Street!

I guess that's what seems to be missing for me - fun. It's an expo, it should be a fun, temporary, amusing display, but simultaneously clever and pointed. I don't think that's asking too much from the Greatest Country on the Planet tm. The US has led the world in dream making for the last 100 years if not from the beginning - sameolddoctor is probably right: if Disney had done it, at least it could have been silly and fun....well, maybe. I haven't been to Disneyland in 25 years, it's probably not such a Happy(est) Place on Earth anymore.

Unfortunately, this isn't a charrette. We're talking tens of millions in dollars handed over for benefits none of us know about (but for which we provide the official American imprimatur), possibly hundreds of millions in revenues over the six-month life of the pavilion without a public dividend, and the setting of a precedent that may never be undone.

Plus there's always the chance that after all the corporados have purchased their slice of the pie, the organizers might still come back to the good ol' USA for funding of the program, visitors, speakers, and so forth.

This could turn into an annuity for the producers and a real loser for the American people.

BTW, the Chinese have expressed (in private circles) their disappointment for how this developed and the outcome. Quite clearly, they were expecting more from the US Government -- but then, nothing's quite as it seems when it comes to "public" diplomacy.

The French Government and the Canadian government are spending about $80 million on their pavilions. The Norwegian government is spending about $60 million on their pavilion. The China National Pavilion—just one of the pavilions that the Chinese government is creating, has a budget of a half-billion dollars. The US Government is spending zero on the US pavilion.

Yes, I said zero dollars.

This is because, under federal law, no public money could be used for this project. Added to this, the efforts to get this project off the ground by the end of the last administration were meager at best. Understandably, an economic crisis dramatically shifted our priorities.

I can’t begin to imagine the gauntlet of parameters this building had to stand up against—I’m impressed.

BRC was NOT the architectural firm. Most of (uninformed) criticism has been focused on BRC, which is NOT an architectural firm (and they do not claim to be). Yes, they have a foundation in theme park design*, but it seems some of their strongest work has been in museum exhibit and expo design. They are ONLY designing/producing the exhibit space. Given the financial and time constraints, I think BRC is a very good choice—they have a track record. It’s a good track record too.



*The ’64 New York World’s Fair had four highly received pavilions (Pepsi, GE, Ford, The State of Illinois) designed by “theme park guy” Walt Disney.

Sorry, Keith, your argument is untrue at its base. US law does NOT prohibit the Government from spending money on World Expos. This is a Big Lie that was spread by the Bush Administration via a rather stupidly naive press to cover for the fact that Bush purposely did not want to ask Congress for money. He wanted to privatize the US Pavilion effort.

(The law merely states that the State Department can spend for Expos only that money that has been appropriated by the Congress for this purpose. Duh?)

You are also incorrect that the efforts of the last Administration were "meager at best." Hardly. The Shanghai Consulate and elements of State in DC bent every possible rule to help out including securing Chinese money to get the other team started and more Chinese money to keep it in the game after it publicly threw in the towel. No corporation was willing to invest. The proposed pavilion was uninspiring and would be a PR disaster.

In fact, the building you now admire so much was architected by a Chinese design institute apparently recruited by the Shanghai Consulate. State did everything it could to keep things going -- the Public Diplomacy branch was racked by scandal and resignations -- until Clinton could ride to the rescue.

Could Rice have done the same? Possibly. But she didn't. The policy was to have the current team sell off the US Pavilion to private interests -- and significant commercial rewards at the Expo due to the US Pavilion's excellent location, courtesy of the Expo Hosts. The problem was, the current team was incompetent as fundraisers. The irony is that Clinton didn't reverse this tragic policy but instead implemented it better than Rice ever could.

As for BRC's role, you're correct, they're not the architects, but had you read through this tread, you would have noted that I earlier explained the complicated relationship between the current pavilion effort, its sponsors, the Chinese, and BRC. They were already the choice when the current team was chosen under dubious circumstances. An investigation might clear up the idle speculation, but so far, there is none.

PS One of the top five pavilions at the 1964 NY Worlds Fair that you cite in a footnote was the Coca-Cola Pavilion, designed by Barry Howard, then a novice designer. It pioneered a sort of physical "virtual reality": you stepped into different alcoves, each portraying a different local in which Coke was consumed.

Almost 25 years later, in 2007, Barry together with exhibition designer Leonard Levitan led the team that was declared the most qualified to create the US Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo after a difficult State Department's RFP. Then for reasons unknown, the team -- which comprised Expo veterans with over 40 World Expo exhibitions to their credit, including an American Industrial Park at Osaka 1970, one of the greatest American exhibitions -- didn't get the bid. Instead, two months later, without competition or transparency, the current team got the bid. The proceedings are still secret and State won't permit them to come out or explain how the Bush policy played into this decision.

Disney was revealed as a great talent at Expos, in part because he was permitted to compete fairly for opportunities to display his ability. Barry and his team are also great talents, but they got aced politically, denied a chance to display their talents which are just as considerable, maybe even more so given the technology and methods now available to those who know how to use them. Despite the disappointment with the current US Pavilion, credit must be given to those individuals who came within a hair of producing a pavilion reflecting the ideals that so many commentators here favor.

Maybe next time? Maybe at Yeosu (Korea) 2012 and Milan 2015, another giant Expo? We should be planning now. But the State Department is preoccupied with bailing out the current team and covering up the reasons why. That's the greatest danger: another rushed, botched selection process; another recourse to politics to choose the pavilion; and more piss-poor pavilions.

BRC Imagination Arts has finally announced details of its interior show for the US Pavilion, and there's a more accurate artist's rendition now available online. As the Shanghai Daily reported, it's all "Hollywood Dazzle." Lots of empty calories, presented with sight, sound, and wind in your face. Does the slum smell appropriately?

But first, the rendition of the US Pavilion as redesigned by an anonymous "Shanghai design institute" is now available. Gone are the spotlights and the Hollywood crowd imposed to provide glamour to the scene. Added is a token roof garden as an element of "sustainability" in an otherwise typically constructed and powered shell.

<img src="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/attachement/jpg/site1/20091106/00221917e13e0c5db96612.jpg" width=420>

(Continued...)

(Continued...)

As for the big show, the Shanghai Daily, March 4, 2010, interviewed BRC founder Bob Rogers about the US Pavilion show:

"THE USA Pavilion at the World Expo 2010 will feature a movie with cutting-edge technologies and Hollywood know-how that is expected to be as stunning as the 3D sci-fi blockbuster "Avatar," designers of the pavilion said yesterday.

"NBA stars Kobe Bryant and Earvin 'Magic' Johnson, who have expressed strong interest in the Expo, may appear at the pavilion to talk with their fans, said Greg Lombardo, director of brand development of BRC Imagination Arts, the pavilion's Hollywood-based design company. [Could it be because one of the partners involved in the US Pavilion effort is also the NBA's agent in China?]

" 'The Garden,' an 8-minute urban fairy tale, will weave four-dimensional effects like wind and rain into the story,' said Bob Rogers, founder and chairman of the company.

"The movie will be played on five 10-meter-tall screens fancifully shaped like tall buildings and turned sideways. By projecting different images and graphic patterns on them they will become buildings, windows and bus stops.

"In the story, a 9-year-old girl plants flowers to turn an abandoned vacant lot in the city into a garden, and her passion and determination inspire her neighbors, who establish the flourishing garden together.

"At the end, a city that was once tired and gray is transformed.

" 'The story highlights the importance of achieving common goals through collaboration, and indicates that the world's nations can work together to create a beautiful future,' Rogers said. The movie has no dialogue, only moving images, music and sound.

"It will be played repeatedly in a 500-seat circular theater during the 184-day Expo.

"Other exhibitions include a movie of Americans of all walks of life sending greetings in Mandarin at the entrance of the pavilion and some innovative exhibits from the pavilion's dozens of sponsor companies.

Treacle in 3D. Tending a garden is hardly coming to grips with demands for sustainability and a livable urban environment, especially in today's mega-cities. But what can one expect when the sponsors are all corporations selling fast food , petrochemicals, and flat-screen TVs?

BRC also did the show for the panned US Pavilion at the Aichi 2005 Expo. For that pavilion, the Japanese laid out $20 million, prototyping the Rice-Clinton corporate sell-out model.