Premiere of Sverre Fehn’s breathing balloon pavilion

“Ode to Osaka” is this year’s summer exhibition at the National Museum – Architecture. The exhibition explores Sverre Fehn’s competition design for the Nordic Pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka in 1970.

A breathing pavilion against air pollution
The defining element of Fehn’s concept was a mobile, undulating form that was to be constructed inside the existing pavilion designed by the Danish architect Bent Severin. Fehn’s pulsating installation would have consisted of two air-filled, interdependently moving chambers containing an atmosphere cleansed of and protected from outside pollution.

A full-sized Fehn within a Fehn
The exhibition emerges from the archival traces left behind by Sverre Fehn’s unrealized competition entry. Taking the surviving material now held in the National Museum’s collections as the starting point, Fehn’s project has been further developed and adapted as a full-scale installation by Manthey Kula Architects. The new installation has been constructed within Fehn’s existing pavilion (2008), where visitors can both enter the pulsating pavilion and experience it from the outside.

Exhibited within Fehn’s Ulltveit-Moe Pavilion from 2008, the mobile pulsating Osaka installation is given a new context that engages the two pavilions in reciprocal dialogue. “Fehn in Fehn” dramatises two phases of the architect’s work, bringing them together in the same time and space. This “premiere” of Fehn’s project gives the public an opportunity to contemplate a vision that failed to materialise when first intended – a vision that aims at a sensuous experience of architecture.

Expo ’70: futuristic visions
With its overarching theme of “Progress and Harmony for Mankind”, the world fair in Osaka is remembered for its futuristic visions and playful constructions. The Scandinavia Pavilion stood out in terms of both its simple exterior and for its theme, “Environmental protection in an industialised society”. A presentation of the 1970 world fair in Osaka can be seen in the exhibition room, the Vault. This explores parallels and contrasts between Fehn’s proposal and the projects that were actually realised at Expo ’70.

The exhibition “Ode to Osaka” can be seen at the National Museum – Architecture from 5 June to 13 September 2015. The curators are Jérémie McGowan, Berit Johanne Henjum and Manthey Kula Architects.

For more information please contact:
Eva Amine Wold Engeset, press officer: 0047 469 50 102, eva.engeset@nasjonalmuseet.no