expo 2023 speaker series | john comazzi on swiss expo 2002
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June Speaker Series Event June 30th | U of MN Design School professor John Comazzi will Share his Experiences from the National Expo organized by Switzerland in 2002 and Lessons Learned relevant to Minnesota | HGA Architects in Minneapolis, MN | 9:00 am- 11:00 am John Comazzi John Comazzi, will present his experiences and observations from his visit to the 2002 National Expo in Switzerland. Held from May to October the “Expo.02″ was distributed among four small towns situated along a chain of three lakes in western Switzerland (Neuchâtel, Bienne/Biel and Morat/Murten). Due to the proximity of the lakes, the planning for each site was designed to create strong relationships to the cities that have historically developed with water as a major economic, social, and cultural influence (something we can certainly relate to in Minnesota). The proximity to the lakes and the decision to stage the sites within distribution of small towns made Expo.02 distinct among other Expos, and offers a unique model for consideration when planning and promoting the 2023 Expo in Minnesota. John Comazzi is an Associate Professor of Architecture in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, and the Director of the undergraduate B.S. Degree Program (Major in Architecture). He taught at the University of Michigan as a Lecturer in Architecture (1999-2006) before joining the faculty at the University of Minnesota in Fall 2006, and has practiced in architecture and planning firms in the Washington D.C. metro region, Michigan, and Minnesota. His areas of research and scholarship focus on: architecture photography, design theory and criticism, design-build, and active learning environments for PK-12 education. He is the author of Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012).TRANSCRIPT
EXPO.02 – EXPO 2023 “Relevant Lessons from Switzerland’s National Expo.02” John Comazzi, Associate Professor of Architecture School of Architecture | College of Design | University of Minnesota
Monday, June 30, 2014
World’s Fair 1939 – Queens NYC: General Motor’s Futurama Pavilion
SWISS EXPO.02 + Expo.02 was the sixth national exhibition and was held
from May 15 to October 20, 2002, in the Three Lakes region of western Switzerland.
+ Previous national exhibitions: Zurich (1883 and 1939), Geneva (1896), Bern (1914) and Lausanne (1964).
+ Thirty-nine exhibits and more than 13,500 events turned the area around Lakes Murten, Neuchâtel and Biel into the country’s cultural centre.
+ The exhibition was held on four different sites in Biel, Neuchâtel, Murten and Yverdon, plus a mobile waterborne site for canton Jura. All the infrastructure was temporary and taken down after Expo.02 ended (with the exception of one train station).
+ The exhibition cost SFr1.6 billion ($1.73 billion) to stage and lost SFr690 million ($745 million).
+ The organisers counted a total of 10.3 million entries, meaning many people visited more than once and that the exhibition also attracted foreign visitors.
+ Sixty-five per cent of visitors used public transport to reach the various sites, while the rest relied mostly on their cars.
-Source: Andreas Keiser swissinfo.ch
SWISS EXPO.02
Philosopher Georg Kohler has noted:
+ “National exhibitions are a Swiss speciality. To some extent they are a snapshot of the country’s spiritual and intellectual state at a specific time, which is why Switzerland needs to reassure itself every 25 to 30 years.”
+ The country is a construction of different cultures, languages and geography, prompting the question of what the Swiss have in common with each other and what defines them as a nation given their fragile cultural identity.
+ It is a question that has been raised since the second half of the 19th century, when Switzerland became a federal state under a national constitution.
+ “National identity as we understood it between 1945 and 1990 wasn’t adapted to the new world order,” he told swissinfo.ch. “A national exhibition was necessary because Switzerland still hadn’t found its place in that emerging world.”
-Source: Georg Kohler as quoted on swissinfo.ch
SWISS EXPO.02
One would be hard-pressed to know what took place there ten years ago. The installations are long gone, although some benefits remained:
+ Today, cars occupy much of the space in Neuchâtel, but the town’s tourism rate has risen in the past 10 years.
+ Murten’s lakeside is pristine and the town ended up with a new railway station and more tourists
+ Yverdon has a park on the lakeshore, but tourism and visitor numbers are down.
+ In Biel, the city has seen a rise in tourism, but stakeholders are fighting over what should be done with the remaining space
+ Biel seems to have reaped the biggest benefits so far. The city managed to reach its goal of improving its image, its infrastructure and its political structure. Thanks to the exhibition, a zone between the station and the lake has been redeveloped, erasing memories of an industrial no-man’s land. Today the area includes schools, a media centre and a retirement home, while a technical university will soon set up there.
-Source: quoted on swissinfo.ch
SWISS EXPO.02 “Five turbulent years in the planning, mounted at a cost of almost $1 billion [$1.78 billion], Expo.02 is not celebrating storybook chocolate-and-cheese Switzerland. Instead, organizers say, it wants to spur the Swiss to see themselves differently and to poke a little fun at some of the country's foibles…”
“The exhibition nearly evaporated more than once when private-sector sponsors withdrew. The government bailed out Expo.02 five times. Despite this assistance, the exposition is still expected to operate at a loss. Undeterred, two-thirds of Switzerland's 7.2 million people say they plan to attend.”
-Elizabeth Olson, “No Taboos at Swiss Expo,”
New York Times, June 23, 2002
“Expo.02 proves how useful fantasy pavilions can be in representing the mood and preoccupations of contemporary architects, whose imaginations are often held in check in the design of day-to-day buildings. The importance of pavilion architecture, for all its whimsy, should never be underestimated. Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, made for the Great Exhibition of 1851, was one of the most influential buildings of the past two centuries, as was the Eiffel Tower of 1889, Le Corbusier's Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau of 1925 and Mies van der Rohe's German Pavilion at the 1929 Barcelona exhibition.”
-Jonathan Glancey, “I have seen the future - and it's wet,”
The Guardian, June 9, 2002
SWISS EXPO.02 The federal government was initially expected to provide SFr130 million in funding and a deficit guarantee of SFr20 million towards the national exhibition. Under the plan, the business community was to stump up the bulk of SFr800 million. But despite several adjustments to the project, Expo.02 failed to impress the private sector, which is now only expected to contribute about SFr330 million.
To keep the project alive, the government has been forced to make up the shortfall, which has grown as the project has gone over budget. Ultimately, the cost to the public purse is expected to be in the region of SFr838 million.
Jean-Martin Büttner, political correspondent for the liberal Zurich-based Tagesanzeiger newspaper, believes...
“The business community is not really interested in Switzerland. For them the country is just a nice location where they like to live and perhaps have their headquarters…”
“The project was not planned properly in the first place…the financing was not clear at all [and] the government was not really interested to finding out whether business was ready to contribute financially… But when the event finally happens everybody will be happy and say: we knew it all along that it would work out fine.”
…The organisers expect up to five million people to visit the venues on Lakes Neuchâtel, Biel and Murten between May and October.
-Urs Geiser, “Expo wins cash reprieve,” Swissinfo, March 5, 2002
Viewed at www.expo-archive.ch, June 20, 2014
SWISS EXPO.02
Neuchâtel: “Nature and Artifice”
Yverdon-les-Bains: “Me and the Universe” Murten-Morat: “Instant and Eternity”
Biel-Bienne: “Power and Freedom”
SWISS EXPO.02: The word "Arteplage" (from French art-art and plage-beach)
Arteplage 5: Mobile Barge | Floating Bar | Event Space
Arteplage 5: Mobile Barge | Floating Bar | Event Space
Neuchâtel: “Nature and Artifice”
Arteplage Murten-Morat: Way-finding/Promenade-sequence
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Nature and Artifice, Jacques Sbriglio and Gruppe Multipack
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Nature and Artifice – experimental materials for pavilions and installations
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Nature and Artifice
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Nature and Artifice
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Dive in—Daily water”
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Dive in—Daily water”
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Pudding—Our Food and Drink”
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Pudding—Our Food and Drink” underground
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Pudding—Our Food and Drink” garden and table
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Pudding—Our Food and Drink” apple display
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Our Planet—our life” by Groupe H. Housed an exhibition on the theme of sustainability; its Douglas fir skeleton is clad in timber recycled from the Hanover Expo. 2000
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Our Planet—our life” by Groupe H. Douglas fir skeleton clad in timber recycled from the Hanover Expo 2000.
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Our Planet—our life” by Groupe H. Housed an exhibition on the theme of sustainability
Arteplage Neucahâtel: Pavilion “Our Planet—our life” by Groupe H. Housed an exhibition on the theme of sustainability
Biel-Bienne: “Power and Freedom”
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Power and Freedom, Towers by Coop-Himmelblau
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Power and Freedom, Towers by Coop-Himmelblau
Arteplages Biel-Bienne: Power and Freedom, pavilions by various designers
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Pavilion “Empire of Silence”
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Pavilion “Experiencing Frontiers”
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Pavilion “Money and Value: The last taboo”
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Pavilion “sWish”
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Pavilion “sWish”
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Pavilion “sWish”
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Pavilion “Happy End”
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Pavilion “Happy End”
Arteplage Biel-Bienne: Pavilion “Happy End”
Murten-Morat: “Instant and Eternity”
Arteplage Murten-Morat: Way-finding/Promenade-sequence
Arteplage Murten-Morat: Camouflaged pavilions
Arteplage Murten-Morat: Monolith by Jean Nouvel
Arteplage Murten-Morat: Pavilion “Why are we here?”
Arteplage Murten-Morat: Pavilion “Why are we here?”
Arteplage Murten-Morat: Pavilion “Monolith: Panorama1 & 2.1”
Arteplage Murten-Morat: Pavilion “Monolith: Panorama: Battle of Morat of 1476, by Louis Braun in1894”
Arteplage Murten-Morat: Pavilion “Monolith: Panorama 2.1”
Arteplage Murten-Morat: “Garden of Violence”
Arteplage Murten-Morat: “Garden of Violence”
Yverdon-les-Bains: “Me and the Universe”
Arteplage Yverdon: Me and the Universe
Arteplage Yverdon: Landscape architecture — West 8
Blur Building, Yverdon Switzerland, 2002
Arteplage Yverdon: Pavilion “Blur” by Diller+ Scofidio Architects
Arteplage Yverdon: Pavilion “The two of us for 24 hours”
Arteplage Yverdon: Pavilion “Question after question”
Arteplage Yverdon: Pavilion “In the land of place names”
Arteplage Yverdon: Pavilion “In the land of place names”
Arteplage Yverdon: Pavilion “Signal Pain”
Arteplage Yverdon: Pavilion “Signal Pain”
Arteplage Yverdon: Pavilion “Signal Pain”
SWISS EXPO.02 REFLECTIONS
+ National Fair (not World’s Fair), yet promoted ideas, debates, and conversations about global issues and challenges.
+ Distributed approach to siting versus single, concentrated location.
+ Mass transit made logistics manageable for visitors whether local or from abroad.
+ Balance between honoring local historical legacies and future projections relevant to broader contexts.
+ National, municipal, cultural, and corporate identities converge.
+ Sites were deliberately located to highlight small towns, forgotten cultural heritage, and natural resources of western Switzerland.
+ Each site took advantage of existing natural systems, infrastructure, and cultural amenities (waterfronts, hotels, train stations, restaurants, etc.).
+ Various options for admissions and fee structure (daily, weekend, week, month, etc.).
+ No clear long-term plan for reuse, recycling, or repurposing of pavilions, materials, or temporary landscapes.