Expo '70 (日本万国博覧会 Nihon bankoku hakuran-kai) was a World's Fair held in Suita, Osaka, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. The theme of the Expo was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese Expo '70 is often referred to as Ōsaka Banpaku (大阪万博). This was the first World's Fair held in Japan.
The master plan for the Expo was designed by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange helped by 12 other Japanese architects who designed elements within it. Bridging the site along a north/south axis was the Symbol Zone. Planned on three levels it was primarily a social space which had a unifying space frame roof.
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Osaka was chosen as the site for the 1970 World Exposition by the Bureau of International Expositions 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 for the Landmark Tower.[1]
Two main principles informed the idea of 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.[2]
The designers liked the idea that like the 1851 London Exposition, the roof of the Symbol Zone could be a unifying entity for the expo. However, they didn't want the constraint imposed by the London Exposition 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.[3]
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.[4]
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.[5]
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.[6]
Seventy-seven countries attended the event and, within six months, the number of visitors reached 64,218,770 people, one of the largest and best attended expositions in history. This set a record for most number of visitors at an Expo until it was surpassed by the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
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 film: the Canadian-produced Tiger Child for the Fuji Group pavilion.
The Canadian Pavilion, designed by architect Arthur Erickson, featured two National Film Board of Canada productions: The Land, a look at Canada from coast to coast, filmed for the most part from a low-flying aircraft,[7] as well as the animated short The City, directed by Kaj Pindal.[8][9]
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 the Technical University of Berlin, or a ten-channel "rotation mill" constructed to Stockhausen's design.[10] Works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, 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.[11] In the course of the exhibition, 19 performers in Stockhausen’s ensemble gave concerts for over a million visitors.[12] "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".[13]
The Expo also featured demonstrations of early mobile phones, local area networking and maglev train technology.
The site of Expo '70 is now Expo Commemoration Park (万博記念公園 Banpaku kinen-koen). Almost all pavilions were demolished, and there remain some memorials a part of the roof structure for Festival Place (お祭り広場 O-matsuri hiroba) designed by Kenzo Tange. Among a few still-intact pieces, the most famous one is the Tower of the Sun (太陽の塔 Taiyō-no tō) designed by the Japanese artist Tarō Okamoto. The former international art museum pavilion designed by Kiyoshi Kawasaki was used as the building for the National Museum of Art, Osaka (moved to downtown Osaka in November 2004) until March 2004.
Additionally, there is a time capsule that is to be left for 5,000 years and opened in the year 6970. The capsule has been donated by the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. This World's Fair concept first originated and started with the two Westinghouse Time Capsules which are to be opened in 6939.