10 years on, Expo site still going strong

NEARLY 50 guests from home and abroad took a journey around the Urban Best Practice Area at the former Expo site in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo yesterday.

On the west bank of the Huangpu River, this area is now a showcase of low carbon and eco-friendly development. The previous pavilions have been transformed into stores, art galleries, exhibition halls, hotels and offices.

This event invited guests, including foreign families, entrepreneurs and Shanghai Magnolia Award winners, to visit 10 landmarks of the UBPA to see the changes that have been made over a decade.

The first stop, Madrid

Pavilion, was a representation of the idea of low carbon at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo with “one house and one tree.” The house is Bamboo Housing, the recreation of a rent-control project in Spain founded and operated by the Madrid government, while the tree is Madrid’s Air Tree, a structure designed by Urban Ecosystems and built from recycled materials and which is energy self-sufficient.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

After the expo, the structures were adjusted to fit Shanghai’s climate. The house’s appearance was mostly kept but the bamboo walls were replaced by walls of a mix of wooden sliding screens and solar photovoltaic glass. The Air Tree serves as a place for residents to relax and watch performances.

The Living Water Park, has been renovated into a “Sponge Park” where rainwater can be collected for watering the plants, washing sanitation facilities and cleaning roads.

The Cases Joint Pavilion’s Taipei booth was built from an old factory into a “house in a house.” Inside the frame of the factory, there is a large “beer barrel” which is now a resort with stores and hotels. The structure’s construction remains true to the original “3Rs” — reduce, reuse and recycle.

Other structures, including the Shanghai Pavilion and the Hamburg Pavilion, all use ecofriendly materials and have environmental protection elements in their designs. The

Hamburg Pavilion is now home to a French culinary institute.

In the borderless 6,600square-meter space, there are 50 artworks with light shows and installations.

The journey ended at the C2 building, which once served expo visitors food from around the world.

Now it’s the art gallery of teamLab Borderless Shanghai, the second creation of Japanese art collective teamLab, an interdisciplinary group of artists, designers, mathematicians, engineers and programmers.

Ivan Chapdelaine, a designer from Canada, brought his wife and their two sons, aged 2 and 4, to join the event.

“I think it’s important to have the children explore different areas of Shanghai and it’s a good education,” he said.