Paolo Deganello Architetto

Design of the italian Pavillon at the Universal Exposition in Osaka

 

Year:     1969

Project

 

We were supposed to illustrate “Italian genius” at the Osaka Universal Exposition. All the countries were competing with pavilions that were increasingly incredible and monumental.

At the head of each glass wall, like Palladio who used sculpture to accentuate the design of the architecture, we placed human shapes in plaster, reminiscent of George Segal’s Pop sculptures, three times human size, and flat with no design, and not plastic because “a symbol” and not sculptural virtuosity. Under the undulating lawn, under the earth, we provided the exposition space true and proper and above the lawn, in sparse order, separated by glass walls, one could admire several Ferraris, Vespas, Parma prosciutto, enlarged tortellini, the Fiat 500 and Parmesan Cheese, the best merchandise of the Italian genius. Radical architecture, always pitiless, opposes the monumental vocation of architecture and with disenchantment reduces it to display structures and shop windows for merchandise.