the Azerbaijan pavilion
The theme of the Milan World's Fair, running through October 31, is food. But the real action is in the temporary buildings. While each nation's pavilion pays varying degrees of lip service to the local agricultural and culinary traditions, for most, the effort clearly went into creating photo-ready architectural ambassadors, to infiltrate a little soft-power propaganda into the Facebook pages and Instagram feeds of tourists around the world.
A walk down the Expo 2015 midway is a parade of the striking, the surreal, and the downright tacky, each pavilion twisting and vaulting in an effort to out-impress the others. As the world's temporary Main Street, the Expo midway vividly illustrates that the world is a weird town. Here are just a few examples that caught my eye:
A walk down the Expo 2015 midway is a parade of the striking, the surreal, and the downright tacky, each pavilion twisting and vaulting in an effort to out-impress the others. As the world's temporary Main Street, the Expo midway vividly illustrates that the world is a weird town. Here are just a few examples that caught my eye:
France
Turkey
the "beehive" at the UK pavilion, by sculptor Wolfgang Buttress
Belarus
United Arab Emirates
Italy
Russia
France
Both halves of the former Czechoslovakia checked in with surreal sculpture that would be more disturbing if they weren't kind of... cheesy.
Czech Republic
Slovakia
South Korea
Angola
Vatican City
Estonia
Uruguay
Sudan
Japan
Iran
the Turkmenistan pavilion, a spectacular example of Central Asian, post-Soviet kitsch
France
Expo Milano 2015 runs through October 31. If you can't jet off to Europe every month, bring Europe to you with...
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