Expo inspired by ‘Imagine,’ wish for world peace

Osaka’s Expo 2025 is being held under the theme of “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.” Prior to opening, it faced some criticism over ballooning construction costs, but it has answered critics by attracting more than 5.8 million visitors from its opening on April 13 through May 31 and still has months to go until it ends on Oct. 13. Booking sites for many of the pavilions are flooded with applications, and there are long lines to enter venues.

The most talked-about attraction is perhaps the Grand Ring, the expo’s centerpiece. The ring is one of the world’s largest wooden structures, measuring around 2 kilometers in circumference and 12 meters in height. It was created by combining traditional Japanese shrine- and temple-building techniques with modern construction methods. Architect Sou Fujimoto, the expo’s site design producer, said that people of any culture or generation viewing the expo site from the top of the ring will immediately feel the expo’s key messages: “the whole world is gathering here now” and “a diverse world can be brought together.”

The pavilions and displays from 158 countries are all housed within the Grand Ring, as though it enclosed a miniature Earth. Around the top of the ring is a skywalk and grass where visitors can lie down and gaze out over the site. Looking toward the south, visitors can see that the ring is also connected to the sea and the world beyond, via Osaka Bay. The view is breathtaking. The design really lets visitors see and feel the world as one.

In creating the expo site and designing the Grand Ring, Fujimoto had in mind the song “Imagine,” explained Hiroaki Miyata, a professor of medicine at Keio University who worked with Fujimoto on the site plan and is also a producer of Better Co-Being, one of the signature pavilions of the Japanese government. “‘Imagine’ was not the only inspiration, but Fujimoto said he had been influenced by the John Lennon and Yoko Ono song even before he became involved with the expo,” he said. “In the lyrics of ‘Imagine,’ there is a part that says, ‘above us only sky,’ and Fujimoto and I had been thinking about the concept of the ‘one sky’ under which we all walk as we create the future. We all look up at the sky in the course of our daily lives, but at the expo, 10,000 people will be able to look up at the sky from the top of the Grand Ring at the same time. This will really symbolize the act of ‘gathering here and now,’ and it is made possible by the Grand Ring.”

Located at the center of the Grand Ring is the Forest of Tranquility, beside the Better Co-Being pavilion. The forest is a primal landscape for Fujimoto, who grew up in the rich natural environment of Hokkaido, and it forms the nucleus of his creative work, manifested in different forms across his various buildings. This small forest was created by transplanting around 1,500 trees that had been earmarked for thinning out in parks and other land across Osaka Prefecture, including the Expo ’70 Commemorative Park in Osaka’s Senri Hills, on the old site of the Osaka Expo in 1970.

“In discussions with Fujimoto, we came up with the idea of having a forest at the center of the expo. In the past, circular architecture would tend to be for things like a fortified castle town, with the inside and outside separated to create a safe zone inside. But the Grand Ring allows access to the interior from anywhere, and by bringing in trees and soil we have created a Forest of Tranquility that supports a new ecosystem. Within the forest is a circular pond, and near the north and south sides of that pond there is an artwork by Yoko Ono consisting of a round hole dug in the ground. In other words, there are nested circles within the ring, structured in a way that the circles resonate with each other,” Miyata said.

The Forest of Tranquility is an open space where anyone can experience art while taking a stroll. It includes artworks aligned to the expo theme of “Designing Future Society for Our Lives” and will also host related performances.

In Ono’s artwork, called “Cloud Piece,” visitors peering into the hole see the sky reflected in a mirror at the bottom. Its origins can be traced back to one of her poems, “Cloud Piece,” from her 1964 collection “Grapefruit.” It reads: “Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.” The poem inspired the song “Imagine,” released in 1971. While the song was originally credited only to Lennon, in 2017 Ono was officially given a co-writer credit.

In other words, at the expo’s center is a forest flanked by the embodiment of an Ono poem that was the genesis of “Imagine.” And the Grand Ring, the embodiment of looking at the “one sky,” towers over the expo site.

Better Co-Being is unique among the expo venues in that it is the only one with no roof.

“The sky is a metaphor for the future, a common ground without borders that is occupied by no one,” Miyata said. “The pavilion I worked on, Better Co-Being, is a space for sharing that same sky while acknowledging our differences. Although it has a lattice-like canopy designed by the architecture office SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa), there are no walls, and it is a place where light, wind and even rain are welcomed. It carries the message that there are all kinds of life and we should be accepting of diversity as we seek to create new value,” Miyata said.

現在開催中の「大阪・関西万博」の目玉、世界最大級の木造建築「大屋根リング」を作った意味について、会場デザインプロデューサーで建築家の藤本壮介はひと目で「多様な世界は繋がることができる」ということを会場を訪れた人が感じるためと語っている。

藤本には大屋根リングの計画段階から名曲『イマジン』のイメージがあったと語るのは、藤本と会場のプランを共に練り、シグネチャーパビリオン「Better Co‐Being」プロデューサーで慶應義塾大学教授の宮田裕章だ。

「大屋根リング」は来場者が同じ空を見上げるための場でもあり、その中心にある「静けさの森」には円形の池があり、池の南北にオノ・ヨーコのアート作品がある。この作品「Cloud Piece」は、地面に掘った穴の底に仕込んだ鏡に映る空を眺めるというもの。そのルーツは『イマジン』誕生のきっかけとなった彼女の自作の詩に遡る。

同様に、宮田が手がけるパビリオンも空を共有する空間。そこにもまた「多様なものを受け入れて、新しい価値観を生み出す」という思いが込められている。

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