The Grand Ring is complete, the Chuo Line extension is up and running, and contractors are putting the finishing touches on dozens of timber-based pavillions. Now, two months before its April 13 opening, Osaka, Japan, is bracing to welcome 28 million guests to the 2025 World Expo.
Pegged by The New York Times as one of its 52 places to visit in 2025 and by Lonely Planet as one of the world’s top 30 go-to destinations, Expo organisers are banking on a surge in tourists – which saw a record 36.87 million tourists visiting Japan last year – taking advantage of a super low yen to swell numbers to the six-month exhibition.
“Whether it’s for the expo, for any other subject, there’s a strong interest towards Japan,” according to Mario Andrea Vattani, Italy’s commissioner general for the 2025 Expo. “We have so many young students and kids and people who ask us” about volunteering at the pavilion. “There is always enthusiasm about Japan,” said Kristina Djordjevic, the deputy commissioner general of Monaco’s pavilion. “So obviously, the tourism here is booming post-COVID, and we hope that Osaka and the expo could leverage that in terms of visitors.”
Today, Wood Central spoke to Andrew Dunn, organiser of an Australian study tour, who will take architects, engineers, and construction professionals around the Expo’s wooden architecture in early May:
“Starting with the Tokyo Olympics and more recently the World Expo, what we are seeing coming out of Japan is remarkable,” according to Mr Dunn, who will also tour the world’s oldest surviving wooden building (the Hōryū-ji temple), a house production facility and several mass timber buildings rising across Tokyo’s skyline. “However, the highlight, without question, is the two days at the Expo, where we will explore the Grand Ring (one of the world’s largest timber structures ever constructed).”
In August, Wood Central revealed that the Grand Ring was fully fixed into place, with the 35 billion yen superstructure (or US $240 million) delivered one month ahead of schedule. It comes as three of Japan’s largest contractors—including Obayashi Corp, responsible for constructing Atlassian Central Tower, the world’s largest timber hybrid tower in Sydney, Takenaka Corp, and Shimizu Corp—had been working around the clock to assemble the enormous timber ring.
Designed by Sou Fujimoto, one of Japan’s top architects, the ring has “deeper value” than its lofty price tag. Speaking to AFP last month, Fujimoto said that in a world where conflicts rage in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere, the ring illustrates that “the simplest shape is a circle.”
“The Ring was created with ingenuity to have the maximum impact within a limited budget by consolidating various functions,” Fujimoto said, with wood the sustainable choice given the “beautiful (carbon) cycle” of trees.
With Japan leading the world in developing building standards that can withstand earthquakes, Japanese cedar and hinoki wood were combined with much stronger European red cedar and reinforced steel to make the giant wooden ring fully quake-resistant. Inside, massive wooden beams hold up a slop roof – which also doubles as a skywalk, protecting millions of visitors from the weather as they wander through the ground level.
Fujimoto’s previous work includes “L’Arbre Blanc”, a multipurpose tower in France’s Montpellier, and a spindly white lattice for the 2013 Serpentine Pavilion in London. As a child in northern Hokkaido, where he used to play in the forest, Fujimoto realised the importance of “the wonderful relationship between nature, architecture and people”.
He enjoyed making things and was influenced by his doctor father, who used to paint and make sculptures. But he discovered architecture at age 14 when he read the only book at home about Spain’s Antonio Gaudi.
“At that time, Gaudi seemed too extreme to me. So I couldn’t imagine I could be something like that,” he laughed, with the young Fujimoto, who admired Albert Einstein, first studying physics at the University of Tokyo. But he “couldn’t understand anything” and so switched to architecture, setting up his own company in 2000, six years after graduation.
And whilst Fujimoto said he does not know where his passion for architecture comes from, when a design like the Grand Ring comes to life, it is “beyond your imagination”.
“And that is amazing.”
- To learn why Japan is leading the way in driving timber projects, click here for Wood Central’s special feature. To find out why a weak Japanese yen is fueling the wave of new timber projects across Asia, click here for more information.