it was 2pm at the time, and the first half of the day was done. while the rest of my expedition was still munching over what bites they may be having, i decided to take some alone time. i wanted to explore the areas just outside zone B and see what other delights lurk behind the corner.
after all, i didn't come all the way to this eastern powerhouse of a country for its cuisine. i came to savour its design. and that's my motivation, through and through.
i needed to cross the street in order to explore the surrounding areas, but right at that moment , out of nowhere the grand chinese army that was marching in droves all around the grounds of the expo, for security purposes i suppose, had cut right in front of me. its disciplined, uniformed presence hinted at the power that the country had come to represent on the world stage, and it was clearly keen on showing its baronial might to the masses with each synchronous step.
i'll wait.
and after crossing the street, the biggest thing, literally, just around one of those corners, that easily was in my immediate sight just outside the zone, was this gigantic exposition hall. it was another collossal piece of design, but what stood out more than its imposing size was its refined modernist futuristic looking metal facade, whose grey - ish thin skin was perforated with hundreds of square openings of various sizes, styled into an unorthodox arrangement of levels.
its top was finished off with an elegant cut of connected, folding triangles, that jutted out considerably from the elevation itself, and it was supported by a v-shaped like arrangement of thin tapered posts.
just outside the main entrance, i saw what had initially thought was a sculpture of an abstract, curvaceous form of a slithering dragon, but as i looked closer, confusion slowly set in. i wasn't sure what i was looking at, but after a while, i deduced that it seemed to be a fluidic splash of vivid colours of the spectrum, frozen in mid-air. i loved how "alive" it looked and how it seemed it would take flight at any moment.
maybe it was a dragon, albeit, an abstract one, born out of perception and artistry.
as i walked around for a while, i felt i needed to get a better look from an elevated viewpoint, so at the time, the best thing to do, was to walk up an adjacent elevated walkway just next to me, and take shots from there. and that's exactly what i did.
in the far distance, as i arrived at the top of the walkway, i saw the grand red china pavilion, which probably was the biggest one on site. in my mind, i had instantly thought that this is a country of superlatives, cause it seems everything done here needs to be humongous for maximum visual impact, screaming at the world for attention and acknowledgement.
i walked on its slippery tiled surface heading towards to the exposition hall on my right and although the view was slightly better than from being on the ground, it didnt really make that much of a difference. what i really noticed though was the relationhip of the building in terms of its connection with the public, wandering around its premises.
a sense of scale could easily be viewed, assessed and appreciated, between the size of the building and the faceless figures walking around its area, like hordes of ants swarming frantically around a huge picnic basket.
and now the dragon, soon will take flight it seems.
i still cant decide though on whether its a dragon to begin with or not, but irregardless on whether its a flying serpentine or a splurge of colours chilled in thin air, it did seem to posses some sort of vigorous energy to it.
maybe that's what i was sensing. energy.
walking over till the other side, i proceeded to get another view of the complex. still hordes of ants is all i see, beneath grey overcast skies, next to a grey skinned box.
and as i continued walking, the spaces infront of me were shaded by an array of large covering, graceful white membrane sail shades, supported by a series of slender white posts and high tensile truss - like steel tubes, anchored on the ground. i could see that this point was the marking of a boundary of another zone, one that was clearly in the center of the entire area of the expo, and clearly showed the china pavilion as its heart. of course, upon gradually realising this epiphany, i had the urge to quickly explore the sights and sounds of the spaces just beneath me, but alas, my time was up.
it was already about 4pm at the time, and i knew i had to rejoin the expedition, now that lunch would have been finished. its ok thought, i still had the whole day in front of me.
this moment of quick solace was all i needed for the time being.
back to my lovely companions.
and what was their plan? the exposition hall!
and so back i went, and this time i entered the passed through the main entrance into the great hall with the rest of them, and as soon as i entered, the high ceilings with slits that let the sunlight (or what little of it we had that day) in through the trusses, immediately made the hall look immensely voluminous.
the main entrance area was flanked with 2 smaller halls on its left and right side, and as i entered the right one first, i then realised it was a grand exhibition space, celebrating the history of the country first through the display of transportation.
minus the multi - coloured pockets of lights glowing on the ceilings, the hall had on old train - station feel to it, evident through its usage of old style wrought iron beams and columns, creating a sense of nostalgia in a dark setting.
then when i was done there i entered the other hall where there was a cinema showing the country's urban development and progress, again from historical commencements to where it stands today. and once were done, out we went and exited the entire complex.
and it was getting dark.
the whole bunch of them then decided to cross the street and head on the next zone and this was the most important one, at least in the eyes of the local populace. we were about to visit the heart of the site, and in its prominent nexus point was the grand china pavilion. this was zone a, showcasing territories under china's sovereignty, most notably the twin jewels of capitalism, hong kong and macau.
and they couldnt have been more different from each other.
the hong kong one clearly had the language of modernist box, with a huge glass enclosure wedged in its volume. its walls were textured with random arrangements of vertical lines, reminiscent of the idea of visually redefining the look of a city skyline and incorporating the city's sense of verticality on its exterior walls, with occasional horizontal slits placed scarcely on the elevation of the pavilion.
the macau one however had adopted this strange, bewildering form of what seemed to be a huge rabbit with wheels as feet and a stiff head with lifeless ears, while the top portion of its body was covered with some sort of indescribably square wool kind of thing and a naked glass body beneath. what was even more shocking to me, was that this pavilion was awarded the red dot design award for outstanding design that year in the pavilion category.
what the hell for, i wondered!
it was such a weird thing to see, this ridiculous over sized rabbit, looking like a dead plastic statue, staring blankly into the distance, standing lost and aimless in a sea of exciting designs!
we entered the hong kong one first, and as expected, the pavilion carried the language of a thoroughly modern cosmopolitan, with a highly generous usage of reflective stainless steel panels and clear tempered glass sheets as its chosen finish for the walls, floors and even the ceilings.
very minor cultural references, such as the hanging of lanterns in its entrance, gave a sense to the visitor that this was a city born an bred in the east, but almost completely western in its appearance. i've been to hong kong a few times, and this definitely felt like entering one of those countless high end retail and shopping lots that the city is famous for all over the planet.
there was an unexpected surprise though at the top of the pavilion. once we reached the top, i was really astounded to find, of all things, a sky garden, not unlike the singapore pavilion i had visited earlier. but even this skygarden was something that had been "tamed" and seemed more appropriately placed in a controlled environment as a landscape feature of a tall building, whether as the singaporean one, seemed more natural and unrestrained in its layout.
once i left the hong kong pavilion, i followed the rest of them to the macau one, but i declined to enter. i just didn't see the point of entering into the belly of the beast, and i felt that the pavilion wouldn't have all that much to offer anyway, cause macau is notoriously known for being the epicentre of the horrendous act of gambling in this part of the world, something i'd rather stay away from, thank you very much.
so i told them to go ahead, and ill just wait outside, taking as many shots as i can. it was a good decision.
once they came out of the pavilion, it was almost about 7.30 pm at time, and they decided they wanted to go back to their hotel, but i had welcomed the night with open arms. i told them that i had wanted to stay on and keep on taking as many shots as i could, and they said they'd meet me in the morning at their hotel. i'd be there bright and early, i said, but the night now belongs to me.
and the first thing that i was in complete awe of was the china pavilion right infront of me, and only word one kept playing in my mind as i gazed at its sheer size and magnitude.
humongous. in every sense of the word .
its design was clearly inspired by the post and beam system, supported through a series of nail - less brackets used as structural support systems in traditional chinese architecture, specifically for temples of worship, pagodas of prayer and palaces of emperors in china's past.
this was a assuredly a celebration of the usage of a historical architectural technique of construction in its buildings, royal or otherwise, like in the forbidden city in beijing, but here however, it had been gigantically over sized and exaggerated beyond belief, so much so that it became the predominant form of the entire colossal pavilion.
the post and beam system, instead of being just the structural support system for the pavilion, BECAME the pavilion itself in a reverse pyramidal arrangement from the ground up, and its collection or criss - crossing long rectangular and extrapolated cubic frames in bright feng - shui gloried shades of red, highlighted its conceptual prominence through and through.
pride in tradition, inspired by the past. glorified in modernity, showcased in the present.
there were other areas at the bottom of the entrance of the pavilion that had been incorporated as part of the overall design as well, but they closed off those areas arounds 8pm. the lines were still long and relentless, and i guess security there wanted to start restrciting access to the pavilion realising it was getting late and it would be closed in a few hours anyway.
so the last 3 hours that i had, i walked to as many places as i could adming these beautiful strcutures in the cold of the night, that had now started drizzling, bringing down the tempreature even more. the freeze began biting into my bones, but i was reluctant to leave so early in the night. i was gonna just rough it out and keep walking as much as i could.
the first one i saw was this mysterious UFO looking structure, that seemed to have landed on the riverbanks of the venue of the expo, also deciding to drop in on this planet for an expedition of sorts on its own. this elegant alien craft, glowing surreally in the dark, was in reality the performance center for the site. i had decided tonight that i would just walk around without really trying to get in each pavilion, simply because there wasn't much time to begin with and i didnt want to be stuck in the lines, now that everyone else had gone back, and my privileged VIP pass has temporarily lost its authority.
so tonight, i saunter.
i wanted to see the other east asian pavilions, especially the japanese and korean ones, so i walked there as quickly as i could. along the way, i'd find gems like this on my way, and they served to enrichen my wandering experiences that night.
this was actually a small exhibition hall with historical artifacts on show and the bamboo trees outside marked its entrance.
when i arrived at my destination, the first one i saw was the korean one, also looking quite large and strangely pixelated in various shades of white, pink and green. from a distance, it seemed like a collection of millions of small plastic cubes that had banded in unity together to form a cacophony of various shapes, like perpendicular boxes and semi - circular arches.
i needed to get closer.
and when i did, i could see that the cubes i first saw was simply a vast and extensive mosaic collection of tile - like panels, with thousands and thousands of scribbled and stroked characters from the korean alphabet, that were used as the dominant decorative element, that had completely covered each inch of the surface of the structure.
richness was in the details here, it seems.
and its no understatement to say that there wasn't a single available cubic inch or millimetre of space left for the incorporation of another letter or art piece on its walls and ceilings.
just next to the korean one, was the one from japan, and it looked as expectedly quirky and oddly intriguing as much as what would one expect to come out of contemporary and popular japanese culture.
it resembled a jewelled and organic pinkish looking unconventional bubble, with two prominent snouts jutting out of the top of the structure. all i could do was stand in astonishment from the outside looking at this amorphous blob, that somehow seemed virile and malevolent, waiting to just come alive and terrorise all of us at the expo, like a beetle - resembling sleeping monster from some fondly nostalgic ultraman movie from the 1970's.
but hey, it is undoubtedly ultra - modernist and highly futuristic looking, and there was an otherworldly sense of beauty about it, especially in it treatment of light and form, something that would easily have been expected from the forward thinking and extremely progressive designer minds residing in the land of the rising sun.
at this time, it was almost about 11pm and the guards had began to chasing us out of the expo. my camera too had pretty much died and there was no sense in hanging around any longer i thought, and so i too, looked for the nearest exit and left. i had easily had gotten a taxi back to the hotel, and once we overcame the language barriers, i was on my way back to my hotel. i gotta get up at 6am again the following day and i needed my energy back as quickly as possible to brave another exciting day tomorrow. the comforts of my bed was i was interested in at the time.
oh what a day. its moments like these that me feel so alive and grateful to have a passion for design. tomorrow would be a thrilling journey of sorts as well i would presume, for tomorrow we visit europe and all her contemporary splendours.
thank you, Lord!
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