A chanson des vieux amants? Belgium and the world’s fairs dr. Rika Devos Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, Ghent University St.-Lucas, Department of Architecture, Wenk World’s fair architecture: a setting for discussion World’s fairs would have lost their meaning in today’s mediatised global village: in 2010, this is old news, as world’s fairs, by their very existence, continue to deliver proof of the will to show, to (re)consider, nothing less than the world. Printed press, live satellite television, Internet, YouTube and Skype, multinational corporations, free travel, changed concepts of the nation and international relations, Europe without borders: all these eye and mind openers have not, as was suggested by many in the 1990ies, drained the sense and purpose from world’s fairs. Ever since the first post-war world’s fair – Expo 58, held in Brussels – organisers have publically questioned the use of their events, as from the 1950s onwards, evolutions in science, (tele)communications and transportation theoretically made the world accessible to all. But world’s fairs offer a specific view of the world, bound by place, time and the exhibition’s theme, which give order and sense to the gathering. Indeed, one of the criteria used by the BIE1 to grant a city the right to organise a world’s fair is the choice and elaboration of a relevant theme. Such a theme – in case of Shanghai 2010 ‘Better City, Better Life’ – has to set the goals for the fair, give sense to the efforts of the participants, provide an opportunity to differentiate from others and unite all in a conceptual way. Organizing or participating in world’s fairs is about making choices, taking stances, speaking publically about the theme and, in doing so, shaping a specific voice or authentic identity: hence today’s potential significance of world’s fairs. At world’s fairs, the choices made and stances taken are expressed essentially in architecture. These positions are steered by the representation of progress. It was Italian writer and semiotician Umberto Eco, who, after his visit to the Montreal 1967 fair, pointed at this binding concept of progress – projecting the future – as essential to the history of world’s fairs.2 Moreover, this history reflects the constancies and radical changes in our concepts of progress and its representations. Another aspect Eco forwarded in his lucid analyses, albeit implicitly, is that projecting the future – with utopian or realistic aims – is an essentially architectural occupation at world’s fairs. The general language at a world’s fair is a language of images: images determined by 1 BIE: the Bureau International des Expositions, founded in 1928, is the intergovernmental organization in charge of overseeing the calendar, the bidding, the selection, and the organization of international exhibitions and world’s fairs. 2 Umberto Eco, “A theory of exhibitions,” Faith in Fakes. Travels in Hyperreality (London: Vintage, 1998), 293. 1 the architectural settings of the site, by a single pavilion or by a specific exhibition feature. World’s fairs are fabrications, motivated by a specific theme, shaped by designers, commissioners and organisers who all attach specific meanings and messages to these images of architecture. (image: Shanghai 2010) The Belgian presence at world’s fair has a long, rich and challenging history. The sequence of pavilions and universal exhibitions erected for the representation of Belgium from 1851 onwards displays recurrent questions and reflexes, but also changing ways to link the Belgian voice with architectural commissions. The challenge to represent the Belgian nation has been met over and over again, shaped according to the formats of the era. Belgium, although among the smallest of nations, has always been an important player in the evolution of world’s fairs and the way the nation was and is represented at world’s fairs is telling for the shifts and constancies in the functioning of great exhibitions and for the appreciation of the changing role of architecture in this process. The early world’s fairs: Belgium as an important part of a rational, harmonic world As a young nation, Belgium was an eager and noted participant at every major world’s fair in the nineteenth century, and this since the very first world’s fair: the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in Hyde Park, London. The Belgian representation is documented as an important one in the 1851 Crystal Palace, but few details are known. By participating in this universal exhibition, Belgium not only placed itself among the important European nations, but also inscribed, spatially and conceptually, in the general order that was designed to demonstrate the world to the fairgoers in an intelligible manner. Architecture was an important tool to shape and represent this rational order. The fair assembled its participants in the Crystal Palace, designed by Joseph Paxton and built for the occasion. The palace delivered the prototype for the architectural setting of most early fairs. The Crystal Palace, a technically vanguard glass and steel structure based on a technology for the construction of greenhouses, covered 7,6 hectares and housed the majority of the exhibits stemming from 27 nations and their colonies. The typology of the Crystal Palace physically united and (re)organised the world in one comprehensive building and enabled direct comparison between the artefacts and tools of the participating nations. These exhibits, chosen by the participants as representative of their latest accomplishments and knowledge, displayed the state of affairs for each nation, but also, in sum, for the world. This world was structured encyclopaedically, arranged following distinct sections and classes. Hence what is really at stake in the organisation of a world’s fair, apart from the diplomatic, political, social and economic steps to be undertaken, is the representation of the 2 world in spatial, architectural terms. The Crystal Palace also demonstrates the potential of universal exhibitions to raise discussion on the formal and spatial appearance of the architecture deemed appropriate to house and represent progress. John Ruskin and Augustus W.N. Pugin, for instance, strongly opposed the ‘unfit algebra’ of Paxton’s Palace.3 It was deemed too bold and unsuitable for its noble task. In the nineteenth century, Belgium organised four great exhibitions on its own territory: in Antwerp (1885 and 1894) and in Brussels (1888 and 1897). These international exhibitions were preceded by a monumental national fair, held in Brussels 1880 to celebrate Belgium’s fiftieth anniversary, for which the Cinquantenaire or Jubelpark was equipped with an eclectic, monumental complex designed by the city architect of Brussels, Gédéon Bordiau (1832-1904). For the Antwerp fair of 1885, located in the new city district in the southern part of town, again Bordiau designed the Hall of Machinery and the Hall of Decorative Arts. The latter had a stupendous triumphal arch as entrance gate, designed by Jean-Laurent Hasse (1849-1919). (image Antwerp 1885) Next to the palaces, the site was equipped with a jardin à l’anglaise where the freestanding follies and ‘exotic’ pavilions of the European colonies were located.4 While few traces of the 1885 fair remain today, parts were recuperated for the Antwerp 1894 exhibition, designed mainly by Hasse. Once more, a scenic park and a monumental hall dominated the plan of the fair. In addition, 120 pavilions were erected in the garden and grouped into specific quarters, planned by Joseph Maton. Yet the most popular area of the site was Old Antwerp, a homogenised wood and plaster, precise reconstruction of an historic Antwerp urban quarter. In between the two Antwerp world’s fairs, Brussels had organised its first international exhibition in 1888, once more with Bordiau as architect-in-chief. The location of the Cinquantenaire was reused and enlarged. The Cinquantenaire served as a venue once more for the 1897 Exposition internationale de Bruxelles. This exhibition additionally covered 96 hectares in the Tervueren Park, where the colonial exhibition, including an inhabited native village, was installed. The panoramic Tervueren Avenue connected the Cinquantenaire with the Palace of Colonies, built in a Louis XVI-style by the architect Ernest Acker (1852-1912). In the interior of the palace, renowned architects like Paul Hankar, Henry van de Velde or Gustave Serrurier-Bovy designed the colonial exhibition stands. Through their designs, the 1897 exhibition not only introduced the colony to the public, but also established the emerging art nouveau. 3 Wolfgang Friebe, Buildings of the World Exhibitions (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1985), 21. 4 Piet Lombaerde, “Architecture of exhibitions and urban development in Antwerp,” in De panoramische droom. Antwerpen en de wereldtentoonstellingen. The panoramic dream. Antwerp and the World Exhibition. 1885. 1894. 1930, ed. Mandy Nauwelaerts and others (Antwerp, 1993), 95-97. 3 The Belgian fairs demonstrate the evolution in the settings of the fairs, which became more and more complex and fragmented. From a single hall with some ephemeral structures for entertainment in its margins, world’s fair sites developed into complex locations, with several thematic international palaces for the arts or for machinery, completed with follies and other, small freestanding structures and pavilions. This splintering or spatial chaos appears to be inherent to the attempts to rationalise the world and to control the fair and its public. World’s fairs demonstrate the impossibility to render the world fully intelligible and organised, on the physical, but also on the organisational, economic or political level. The diversity and size of the display appeal to the imagination of fairgoers. As philosopher Lieven De Cauter has explained in his seminal text, the experiences of large quantities – of exhibits, of nations, of identities, of fairgoers – eventually led to “the collapse of a whole system of representation”, which gave rise to an entire new series of frightening and exciting experiences.5 De Cauter speaks of the “panoramic ecstasy,” the thrill triggered by the experience of unintelligible vastness.