Pavilion design ideas - United to feed the planet at US pavilion Milan expo

American Food 2.0: United to Feed the Planet at us pavilion Milan expo 2015 is about the USA Pavilion, named ‘American Food 2.0, United to Feed the Planet’ intends to show just how engaged the US is in global food security, food innovation and has become a center for the best food on the planet. Admittedly a complex set of ideas for a relatively small pavilion to convey! Expo’s (or World’s Fairs, World Expos, International Expositions, etc.) occur about every 5 years and started in 1851 with the Crystal Palace in London. The last Expo in Shanghai in 2010 featured a USA Pavilion that was a closed, opaque oddly shaped building filled with video monitors and entered via a long, long queue. Our design for the next Expo, in Milan in 2015, is a response to our latest pavilions and a gesture of openness, transparency and accessibility.

United to Feed the Planet at US Pavilion Milan Expo

Architecture & Design

The USA Pavilion is a one-of-a-kind building designed by award-winning architect James Biber of Biber Architects in New York. It is a 35,000 square foot space within Expo Milano’s 3.6 million square foot sustainable “smart city.” The building is a multi-level experience that flows with activity from top to bottom, side to side.

Vertical farm symbolic of our rich & ever-evolving agricultural history.
Installations, events, and exhibits throughout.
Rooftop terrace & cafe with regionally representative agricultural plantings.
Gathering space, courtyard, and VIP meeting spaces.
Retail merchandising opportunities.

The US Pavilion Milan Expo opens its airplane hangar sized door to the main pedestrian approach, like an invitation to enter, and is as open, airy and breezy as a building can be.

The Boardwalk (made of recycled lumber from America’s boardwalks) rises to the second level, concealing a defined exhibition below (where a queue will be managed) and is the main forum for self -guided viewing.

The rooftop terrace features a variable glass shade and energy generating panels above, and a translucent floor below. It will be a nightly party for the rooftop craving Italian crowds.

But the main architectural feature is a football-field-length Vertical Farm featuring a variety of harvest able crops in a vertical array. It is as though a typical horizontal field was rotated (think “Inception” with a farm field standing-in for Paris…) to become the side of a building.

You may like German Pavilion.

It’s not our proposal for serious urban or vertical farming, which is usually indoors, but a didactic display talking about the past, present and future of the American farm, and the American diet.

US Pavilion Milan Expo:

In addition to ‘farmers’ working the (vertical) fields every day. There will be spectacular performances on the vertical wall. Like the Flying Wallendas meet Martha Graham in her ballet for Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring. Graham’s 1944 performance, with Merce Cunningham as the Revivalist. That was the quintessential expression of the modern American Identity in dance and music. We hope that the harvest ballet will act as this moment’s American Food 2.0 identity.

The US Pavilion Milan Expo itself is a scaffolding for ideas. A rethinking of the nature of the Expo pavilion and of America as a force in the food world.

Mitchell Davis, Ph.D, EVP of The James Beard Foundation. And I presented the project to a food-centric crowd at the New School in April. The series, called Dining + Design, pairs designers and their food clients for discussions about how food meets form.

President Obama said:

We’re going to put together an outstanding US Pavilion Milan Expo that showcases. American innovation to improve agriculture and nutrition and the health of people around the globe. I know the Milan Expo is going to engage and educate the world as only Italy can. And I will tell you that I already have some volunteers from my staff. Who want to go and really make sure that the Expo goes smoothly. (Laughter.) I suspect that some restaurants and shopping may somewhere be in their agenda.