Design for Osaka

At Montreal's Expo 67, the glittering bubble designed by Buckminster Fuller made the U.S. Pavilion the highest--and most striking--building at the fair. For Osaka's Expo 70, the U.S. has come up with a switch: a ground-hugging shallow dome that will be the lowest pavilion at the fair--so low, in fact, that part of it will be underground.

Designed by a team of young New Yorkers who won the commission over much better known contestants, the present pavilion is a comedown of sorts from the spectacular cluster of airborne spheres originally proposed but ruled out by a congressional budget slash. But the design is still a spectacular achievement. From the air it may look like a king-size mattress pad, but from ground level the thing it most resembles is a moon crater roofed over with a shallow, translucent dome. The pavilion covers an oval area approximately the size of two football fields. Its solid, earth-filled walls slope as gently inward and upward as the lower slopes of Fujiyama. Halfway up, the solid earth gives way to an airy, translucent blister. Made of vinyl-coated fiber glass, this roof is laced by restraining cables and is supported entirely by a cushion of compressed air.

Inside, a two-story structure will house seven major exhibits built around images of America past and present. The largest area will be devoted to U.S. accomplishment in space exploration, including a full-scale simulation of the Sea of Tranquility landing site of the Apollo 11 moon shot. American life on earth will be covered by a series of exhibits of architecture, folk art, and a review of the realistic tradition in U.S. painting, from Gilbert Stuart to Andrew Wyeth. A mixed-media sports exhibit will include memorabilia of baseball's greats. The U.S. avant-garde will be represented by the results of an art and technology program; twenty artists including Claes Oldenburg and Tony Smith have been working for the past year with industrial plants to see what closer collaboration between artist and artisan can do.

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