Expos as Great Urban Projects

Expos as Great Urban Projects: Present and Future is an outcome of a multiyear design research project that has been conducted at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in collaboration with the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) since 2018. The overall research has been led by Professor Joan Busquets, with Dingliang Yang and Michael Keller as co-principal investigators.

The research and publication explore the capacity of World Expositions as mega-event strategies in transforming and creating new conditions for urban development, and retrospectively reviews the innovative ideas on urbanism and architecture in Expos and examines future design strategies.

The overall research is framed under the title “Expos as Great Urban Projects, Present and Future,” and the outcome is correspondingly organised in two volumes: Volume 1: Understanding Expos in an Urbanizing World, condense two parts: the urbanistic impact of expositions at the scale of the metropolis or territory and the catalog for Interpreting Expos in the Urban Context, that explores the design and legacy impact of expositions at the scale of the site and immediate locality. Volume 2: Learning from World Expositions, opens comparative studies of main Expos urbanistic features and conclusional analysis on the design of future expos.