Expo Milano 2015: Since so many dwellings in the Big Country are made of wood it used to be a thing in the US, whereby folk would up and move to a new town or whatever and take their entire house with them. A sort of hang over from the days of the wagon train perhaps, not forgetting to take some cows with them – ‘Head ’em up, move ’em out’. Maybe ‘jack ’em up and move ’em out is still so common that Nat. Geo. doesn’t bother highlighting it as a feat any more, after-all it is not really so difficult if you find a decent sized trailer and truck to pull it. Now if one builds a concrete structure in Milan (Italy) at ‘Expo Milano 2015’, knowing full well that at the end of the exhibition, the whole lot has to be knocked down, chucked on the scrap heap and forgotten, surely that can be some anti climax and certainly a tad soul destroying for its creators.
What if it could be moved to a new location lock stock and barrel?
The then Ministry of Culture in Bahrain (Shaikh Mai bint Mohammed) had a plan: Enter the Expo, build from scratch a ‘concrete’ pavilion large enough to allow visitors to be able to freely move about within; grow some tropical plants – then at the end of the Expo, whether anybody liked it or not, dismantle the entire building slab by slab or brick by brick, stick it on a boat and ship the lot back to where the plans were hatched in Bahrain. It doesn’t end there! The whole lot will be rebuilt, plants re-planted and become a permanent exhibition on the Northern Island of Muharrak.
This endeavour needs documenting, but nobody has asked yet.
Oddly, the gathering seen in the video was not to boast the feat of technology about to unfold (literally) before us, but to highlight the fact that the Bahrain pavilion won second prize, or silver for the best stand over 2,000 square metres, beating out China and losing only to France. Well done! Pizza anyone?