EXPO Milan, May 1st-October 31st, 2015

Text: György Szegő
Photos: Hanna Szegő, György Szegő

The topic of the Milan-based world exhibition which is an architectural survey taking place in 2015 covering an area of 1 million square metres is as follows: „To nurture Planet Earth and give energy to Life”. This year’s EXPO presents a total of 145 countries the population of which gives 94% of the whole planet. The world exhibition expects appr. 20 million visitors during its six months of opening, which is also a reason for why the main topic actually matters a lot. The EXPO is extraordinarily complex – however, behind its anthropological, historical, cultural, aesthetic, scientific-technological and medical horizons, it is global economy that rules.
As much as 90 % of the national pavilions stand on the narrow and long sites of the longitudinal axis. As a result, the whole exhibition is easy to survey and exhibitors appear to be treated as equals in rank. In the great junction there is the fourfold corner sculpture by Libeskind referred to as the „quattrofontana”. The post-exhibitional utilisation of the area of the EXPO seems like a realistic vision because of the proximity of Fair Milan. By all means, there is already a new underground line constructed to facilitate the co-existence of the two sites after the closure of the EXPO and to develop their neighborhoods. As a result, the international investment shall not devaluate to nil later on. In addition, the area of the 1906 EXPO in the heart of the city has been rehabilitated including its significant existing infrastructure: here a luxury urban-scale real estate development was initiated within a project named Tri Torri CityLife. Its marketing is facilitated by the fact that the designers, Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid have already inaugurated a significant part of the district.