The theme of the 2005 Aichi EXPO is‘Nature’s Wisdom’. It allows the visitors to experience contact with nature, within nature, and meanwhile demonstrate the great charm of humans living in harmony with nature.

The Aichi EXPO is located in the vicinity of the mountain village of Aichi Prefecture. It is a very beautiful natural region where there are low hills, valleys and ponds. The Nagakute exhibition site used for the Aichi EXPO was originally the youth park of Aichi Prefecture, which is covered by forests, flowers and birds. It takes careful planning to build the EXPO site on this green land using‘nature’as a theme. Forbidding human intervention on this land may be the only way to protect its natural beauty.. The designers used their wisdom and skills of landscape design extensively putting themselves in the position of solving the dilemma between modern society and“living in harmony with nature’, in order to carry out the delicate task in attempting to protect the natural theme. When you tour along the EXPO exhibition site, you can feel the delicate planning that the organizer has put in and experience fully“Nature’s Wisdom”.

Strolling around the EXPO landscape, you will be stunned by the uniqueness of every building. The colored wall paintings of the Egyptian Hall, the shining golden roof of the Nepalese Hall, the aesthetics of the French and German Halls external structures, the colorful porcelain brick wall of the Spanish Hall, the big bamboo cocoon that covers the Nagakute Hall, all these exhibition halls exhibit their unique cultural ideologies. But they have one thing in common, that is, they are all using ecological friendly materials.

The exhibition site preserves the original environment as much as possible, so that nature can harmoniously blend with the newly constructed buildings. The exhibition place is not very conspicuous when viewed from afar, because there are no sparkling glass curtains or steel structures. The designers also avoided the use of compact designed configurations. The basic construction concepts, the suspended curved passageways and the public exhibition space of the whole plan, are ingeniously reflected in the landscape design. In order to reduce an oppressive feeling, the buildings are divided into segments, and the structural configurations overlap each other so that the forest can be seen in between them. The exhibition halls, which are distributed amidst the deep valley, make use of the ascending, slope to adjust the visitors’vision; however, the exhibition halls along the ponds adopt the degrading ground to dissolve with the landscape and forest.

This EXPO adopts an open design concept, demonstrating the city way of life within nature. Here, the leading actors are the audience. If visitors were regarded as the“painting”, then the square and facilities would be the“background”, and the original landscape and plants might be regarded as the“canvas”. The landscape design on the empty space has adopted the square concept; stones and blue bricks are inlaid in the single-colored facade materials, forming into a clear grey lacework. The selection of plants also tries to avoid complicated colors. The flat square-brick facade materials on the east-west axis of the Love×Earth square are capable of displaying different patterns of color under the morning, noon and evening sunlight. The“breathing green wall”located on the axis symbolizes the“lung of life”.

Sufficient consideration has been given to the harmony with nature, the integration with the exhibition hall in the design of the landscape of the pavilion in its minute details. For example, even the road lamps for lighting in the pavilion were designed in various forms, thus consitituing an organic part of the landscape.

The theme of the 2005 Aichi EXPO is‘Nature’s Wisdom’. Humans must learn to cherish their surrounding environment, their contact with nature, integrate carefully and try to live along with nature. The landscape design of this EXPO demonstrates sufficiently that humans should always place nature as the top priority in their lives.

Picture Description:

The exhibition halls integrate itself with the landscape and plants.