Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
h e overall concept of this pavilion originated from the Spanish INGE-
NIAqed Company. h e Shanghai World Expo Aff airs and Coordination
Bureau also invited Mrs. Carmen Bueno from INGENIAqed to work as an
independent consultant to help develop the concepts and themes of the
Shanghai World Expo. h us, INGENIAqed's infl uence was greater than the
single pavilion.
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According to an interview with Bueno, “Dream is the
'engine' that we made to 'run' this pavilion. It will lead the beautiful future-
oriented trip for all thinkers, technocrats, scientists, and visitors.” When
asked what kind of urban experience inspired Bueno in selecting the con-
tent, she answered, “some surrealist fi lms and literature including the uto-
pian works which are beyond the reality gave us inspiration. h is inspiration
can provide various points of view. For example, we can use diff erent ways
of thinking to think about city. We can think about the question of how to
build a more idealistic city.”
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Hua Bu, a Beijing-born thirty-seven-year-old artist, designed the origi-
nal animated fi lms in this pavilion. h e cartoons on the fi lms were visually
fantastic and the music contributed to the surreal atmosphere. In the “Eco
City” fi lm (see fi gure 10), the beginning images were of a space ship, fol-
lowed in succession by a Roman bath, a magical unicorn, pipes and a factory,
and a girl zapping a dragon out of a handheld machine. h e factories pro-
duced a “delicious nanometer cake,” and as the multiracial children jump on
space age pods, a deer runs away, leading to the next city of “diverse possi-
bilities.” Here, we return in spirit to Dali's
Dream of Venus,
only this time the
dream is of a surrealist and cyborgian hybrid of technology and nature.
competing future narratives
How were tensions about the meaning of the city realized, expressed, and
enacted at the world expo, and how did the event envision the Shanghai of
the future? Before the expo, the site was home to the eighteen thousand resi-
dents discussed earlier, alongside the city's historic industrial sites, such as
