Expo 2008, Day 3

On Day 3, I visited a few more national pavilions, the rest of the Spanish regional pavilions, and some of the theme pavilions.



I tried to visit the theme structure, the Water Tower (or Tower of Water), but unfortunately, it was closed for some reason. Unfortunately, my Spanish and the volunteers' English wasn't good enough to find out why. They suggested I try back later on. The tower was particularly striking at sunset, however.

To my eyes, though, I would have liked to have seen something a bit more iconic. The tower, from the outside at least, looks too much like many office towers I've seen.



Galicia's pavilion was a good example of a small, simple pavilion that really works. There wasn't much to their exhibit as it was one where people simply wandered in and out, but the video installation was striking enough that I noticed many guests lingered for quite a while. It was more artistic and abstract that a simple video screen. Upon further inspection, I discovered each colored rectangle was actually the bottom of a plastic food dish filled with water and with red, green, and blue LED's inside. I took some more photos as well as video of this exhibit which I'll be posting later.



It was the Spain National Day of Honor at the site, so the Spanish Pavilion was closed. Presumably this was because of dignitaries. The site is certainly not lacking for volunteers in their iconic outfits.



Fans of Expo 2005's Kiccoro and Morizzo will be happy to see them teamed up with Expo 2008's Fluvi outside the Japan Pavilion.



The themed areas were connected with this wonderful sunshade that seemed to visually pull together the disparate pavilions. There were plenty of nice benches, too. However, it would have been nice if they'd put the benches under the shade.



The Cities of Water Pavilion proves that you don't necessarily need new technology to create an effective exhibit. I'll speak later of the Water theme, but this pavilion exposed some of the problems with water as a theme. The issues are far more complex than can really be dealt in pavilions such as this and some of the inconsistencies are mostly unaddressed. Dams can convert water into power lessening our dependence on oil, but it can create other environmental problems.



Ten years ago at Lisbon's Expo 98, I noticed that many pavilions were using class floors so that you seemingly hovered over sand, water, or other materials. It seems like a common design choice this year is a white plastic flooring that I would imagine holds up to traffic pretty well and is certainly different from what you see in everyday life. Here's how it looked at the Sweden Pavilion. Carpet is harder to photograph than you might imagine.

...and now I'm off to Day 4!