• LOCATION: SHANGHAI, CHI
• CLIENT: DANISH BUSINESS AUTHORITY
• SIZE: 3.200 m² NEW EXHIBITION PAVILION
• YEAR: 2008
• STATUS: COMPETITION PROPOSAL – CLOSED
• ARCHITECT: CEBRA

The world Expo 2010 in Shanghai was an opportunity for countries of the world to showcase their knowledge, industrial products and culture. For a small and fairly well-educated nation like Denmark, setting up an exhibition in the booming Chinese market was a golden opportunity that called for bold architecture. The main slogan for the expo was ”Better City – Better Life”, four simple words that express Chinese optimism and an ambition to develop China in responsible and yet prosperous ways.

To respond directly to the exhibition theme, we proposed a hovering Danish utopia – a micro metropolis – squeezed into a compact block with a distinctive skyline. Entering the building is like walking into a dense city of streets, squares and strange spaces of technology and art, all of them tied together in a dramaturgically planned route. Like many fairy tales of the famous Danish author, H.C. Andersen, the route starts and ends in the same place. Along the way, the main character – in this case the visitor – experiences all kinds of magical things before he successfully ends his journey. The building is a built metaphor, a life-size structure that happens to be a scale model of a magical city. People passing through this little world are made to feel like Alice in Wonderland.