10. KFC9. "Lines"
In a city as large as Shanghai (~32million folks) and an expo that garnered an average of 450,000 visitors each day, lines were common. To see a pavilion in just about any non-peripheral country (ie. Spain, USA, Russia, China, Japan, Sweden, France, Germany, etc.), one would average 3-5 hours to get in. I'd also mention here that the single file line concept in general doesn't really exist here. For the most part, my experience in at the expo was usually a mob of people packed densely in the 2 meter width queue area.
8. New Technologies that bring more headaches
A big thing at the expo were the electric carts shuttling people silently from one part of the expansive campus to the other. Silent, for the most part. One thing that was of particular annoyance were the horns that were constantly honking at pedestrian traffic crossing the walkway. Divorced from the rumbling sound of an engine and replaced with the similar whining of the transmission, the general sounds you would encounter as you traveled or waited in line for hours was incessant honking and whining. It is one thing to design futuristic space-saving, noise pollution reductive, energy efficient cars, but it's another to design a means of maximizing it's benefits, which is merely a testament to the density of people jaunting in the streets.
7. Visual Projection and reflection.
A time-old element of Architectural detailing and interior design has always been to create space, and to project it by creating an illusion of it. With a futuristic projection of a better life being a theme befitting a World Exposition, it would make sense that designers intend to make the connection between new ways of seeing and percieving with the spirit of innovation and progressive thinking underlying one's presentation. A good example of this would be the Barcelona UBPA pavilion, in which mirrors and reflective glass add depth to a modest space, reflecting the light of city living from TV-screen partitions off the walls, creating an expansive and immersive atmosphere terminating in what appears to be an orb of scenes and textures of Barcelona, floating in the dimly lit space.
6. New Ways of seeing
With all of the hype surrounding 3D televisions and panoramic experiences, plenty of the expo's participants utilized these new vision projection developments ad nauseum. Examples: Saudi Arabia, Zhejian (china) Taiwan, Liverpool Vanke Pavilion, Republic of Korea, the Pavilion of Urban Being, Australia, BROAD Pavilion Pavilion of Urban Living, etc.
It's great, don't get me wrong, but not specifically life changing. It's cutting edge technology that probably took countless man-hours to set up, but technology can't sell you a utopian future dominated by...
5. Nation Branding.
Can you blame the majority of country pavilions for feeding you images upon images of beautiful scenery devoid of dirtiness and cars, with white-toothed smiling faces of the country's residents? No. There is usually a blurb about the country and it's history, and then a presentation of some sort with generic aerial scenes of urban centers and optimistic waxing about future plans and developments that will make their country better.
(ie. invest in their economy so that they can continue to put forth their visions of the future). It's sobering but true: the first step to actually building and redeveloping better cities is to put forth the capital, whether it's financial or academic or emotional. Without fail, that is what many country pavilions did, keeping in mind the high traffic of people that they had to keep on circulating through. It's a numbers game, and you really couldn't offer more details than the general picture. 4. Passport stamping.
World Expo's can be taxing and maybe boring in terms of lines and waiting and it's certain that many minor pavilions may be ignored for the bigger names. The coordinators of the expo came up with a brilliant idea to stimulate optimum line waits and better distribution of visitors to pavilions by instituting the Passport stamp checkpoint at every one. For a low price to buy an official passport book from an Expo retailer, one could garner proof that they had visited a certain pavilion by getting theirs stamped there, making for a souvenir in which a person can claim and remember where they visited in their time there. It's such a successful and genius element that kept people interested throughout the course of a day. Think about it: 160 RMB (23.5 US dollars, roughly) per person to visit, multiplied by however many people visit with you implies a big investment up front to enter the venue. That, along with the long lines and waiting in the steamy Shanghai summer generally instills in the visitor a goal oriented mindset. More pavilions visited legitimizes your time and money. The passport encourages that. It also encourages the loss of knowledge retention as the pavilions and their messages themselves may not entirely be the ultimate end of a visit, but rather a visit to the stamp booth at the exit. It's fun, it's profitable. It may or not be the best way of instilling knowledge or values, but it is what it is.
3. Skins and surface treatment
A great thing about the Universal World Expos are the character and manifestation of innovation. The 1889 World's fair was all about innovations in building technology, using iron and steel to create fantastic advances in transportation and construction. The early era of the worlds' fairs were all about structure. Innovations in cultural expression and national branding in the last century have led to changing attitudes in pavilion design.
As the short duration of these Expos necessitate the design proposition of having to make a deep impact (visually, emotionally, etc.) in a short period of time after which the structure is taken down, a lot of the capital spent on the design is the exterior facade and interior skin design.Many of the structures at this expo were prefabricated or made of simple construction mechanisms that allow for easy construction and recycling.
In some cases, this was highlighted as a case study of construction and architectural design (BROAD pavilion, Vancouver UBPA and Canada Pavilions) or adaptive reuse (UBPA joint pavilions 3 and 4). Just about every pavilion's main framework is glass, steel, and concrete. The skins, veneers and double facades then are designed for maximum intense visual impact, packaged with a simple story about it's inspiration (cultural, 
metaphorical, architectural and technological).For example, the Spain pavilion is really an irregular steel frame construct with glass panes, but it's overall form is made smoother and more metaphorically descriptive through it's second skin, a facade of wicker baskets, irregular and imperfect in the individual weaving of each unit, but unified together as a legible whole, indicative of the country and it's puported valuing of traditional culture married with progressive policies and contemporary modern life. The wicker texture at all scales represent honesty and temporality in face of natural forces, a poetic and impactful means of visual communication as you wait for 5 hours to get inside.
2. Water is the single most pressing concern for the future of cities.
Access to clean water is and will be the determinant factor on future growth at all scales of the globe, especially at the city and municipal level. In the projection of the future, the expo planners made for gratuitous use of water for both consumption and an educational level. The first thing I experienced at the expo were large
spans of water misting equipment at the top of the Expo axis underpass, providing shade and reducing the external temperature of the walkway by several degrees centigrade, all at a minimum use of water. Purified water stations are available for drinking at regular intervals all across the venue.Many pavilions used water to reduce the heat island effect and provide a percieved coolness effect. A public square was affized with a grid of water misters, creating a foggy atmosphere in which one could
walk. the Alsace-France UBPA pavilion utilized a waterfall along it's sloped facade. And don't forget about Haibao, the ubiquitous mascot of the expo was branded on every single medium imaginable, from t-shirts to gold medallions, in statues and sculptures in every single major city in China, and most certainly in the form of stuffed plush toys. He is, as you can imagine, an anamorphosized water drop, inspired by the chinese character for person (ren). That the theme, "better city, better life" is played in tandem creates an intellectual space in which a person must make the connection between healthy cities and water.
1. Better Kids, Better Life.
The entire Expo,
if nothing else, is aimed at families and their children. The Republic of Korea pavilion performance says it best. The presentation is a hybrid cartoon-reality musical video presentation entitled "New world, just for you", in which a group of young Asian men and women fly into the city and with a wave of their hands create parks, gardens, public transportation and mid-rise developments with access to light water and food, all the while singing a simple themed music piece through the voices of 10 year olds. The logic is sound: If society aims to mitigate the issues that are ingrained in our current way of life, education of those that are willing to listen and aren't full of other concerns(ie. Kids)
the best way of instituting societal change. And so it goes that the voices and virtual people that guide you through many pavilions are kids. If you have a hard time believing that, then check out the 5 meter tall sculpture of a life-like baby in the Spain pavilion. Yessir....
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