Visions of a Brighter Future: The History of Progressive Design At Worlds Fairs

1.5 units

From the time of the Crystal Palace Exposition in 1851, world's fairs have been fraught with boosterism, nationalism and the exploitation of cultures deemed lesser. But due to the infusion of political will and large amounts of money, they also involved the design and construction of enormous numbers of buildings all at once - resulting in the creation of small cities with their own infrastructure of utilities, waste disposal, police departments, hospitals and power plants. The best architects and engineers of each era were called upon, sometimes in official competitions, to design and build innovative structures that expanded the use of materials and utilized engineering solutions which affected the built environment of the world. The 1893 Chicago World's Fair alone changed the way Americans looked at cities and started the City Beautiful Movement. Many architects designed influential pavilions at world's fairs, including Eliel Saarinen, Alvar Aalto, Oscar Niemeyer, Mies Van Der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Eero Saarinen, Frei Otto, Moshe Safdie, Kenzo Tange, Thomas Heatherwick, Norman Foster and Buckminster Fuller. Today still-standing legacies of these fairs, including the Eiffel Tower, the Seattle Space Needle, the Montreal Biosphere, Habitat '67 and Zaha Hadid's Bridge Pavilion remind us of past glories. World's Fairs are not relics of the past, but continue to be held today, involving architectural firms in master planning, pavilion design and exhibit creation on a massive scale. Students will be expected to make short 10-15 minute presentations to the class on local sites at assigned times over the course of the term. Other class requirements include regular attendance and class participation in discussions that demonstrate awareness of the required readings. There will also be a short paper at the beginning of the semester and a 15-page final research paper. For this paper students will be expected to document, critically analyze and draw conclusions about a building, structure or landscape at a world's fair.