Boris Krasnov: The Shanghai EXPO is a message to humanity from every nation

EXPO 2010 will take place from May 1 to October 31, 2010 in Shanghai under the slogan “Better city, better life.” RIA Novosti commentator Yelena Zagorodnyaya talked with Boris Krasnov, the designer and developer of the Russian pavilion, about the concept of the dream city he has created.

 

EXPO 2010 will take place from May 1 to October 31, 2010 in Shanghai under the slogan “Better city, better life.” RIA Novosti commentator Yelena Zagorodnyaya talked with Boris Krasnov, the designer and developer of the Russian pavilion, about the concept of the dream city he has created.

 

Boris, what is the main idea behind the Russian pavilion?

First of all, what is noteworthy about EXPO-2010 for our country? It is the first time in 19 years that Russia is building a pavilion for the exhibition. Its design and construction began back in the Soviet era. If memory serves me correctly, that was in 1992 in Seville. Since then, Russia has just rented ordinary exhibition spaces.

And then it was decided, before the crisis, to build a separate Russian pavilion. I can say right away that out of the 240 countries at the EXPO in Shanghai, only 49 countries have pavilions: the most powerful and progressive countries. And we should give our government credit for deciding to go ahead with this despite the crisis. Here, we needed to fight for our country’s honor without being seen to be boasting. So building work is underway on it now. Of course, not on the same timelines as the rest of the world. They’re taking five years while we’ll do it in one year.

 

So the pavilion will be open by May?

Of course! How else would we have it! We know how to build when we have to. But we’re also observing how others are building at the EXPO, and that’s cool. It’s the triumph of architectural thought. The theme of the EXPO is “Better city, better life.”

 

What about the Russian pavilion?

Here, you need to understand what makes the EXPO different from any other trade show. It is not a matter of exhibits or achievements. It is about our future, we are talking about messages to humanity from every nation, from every country, about what they imagine the perfect city to be. We had a very long time to ponder this during our transition period. Russia’s history in general goes something like this: closed cities, numbered cities and cities that practically did not evolve in the physical sense, where there were defense companies and so on…

 

Well, there’s probably still the image of a grim and aggressive power left over from Soviet times.

Grim and aggressive, yes. And they of course, expected us to build something huge. The essence of the task before us was finding external supplies through a politically correct attitude towards the way people should live. Here we needed to take the bull by the horns, so we based everything we did on books by our great writer Nikolai Nosov. We adopted the motto “The best city is the one where children live well.” Our ideal city is based on the trilogy “Neznaika in the Flower City,” “Neznaika in Sun City” and “Neznaika on the Moon.” [Neznaika, from the Russian “ne znayu,” “I don't know,” is the title character of a trilogy of children’s books by Nikolai Nosov. Neznaika is a boy who is ignorant, lazy, rude and conceited, but he is also curious, kind, enterprising, and unbelievably lucky. He is reminiscent of the popular Russian folk hero Ivan the Fool, a flawed young man who always manages to come out on top.] Of course we need to pay attention to the new generation. In our pavilion on the first floor, you will see large installations displaying children’s drawings showing what children imagine an ideal city to be and what buildings from that city look like.

 

It’s some kind of dream.

A child’s dream, and one that really can be built. On the second floor, there is no Flower City and no Sun City: unfortunately what we have here is the preliminary stage. Three pipes, above which we see space with exhibits and these buildings are implanted everywhere, whole city streets. We based them on five lines of endeavor that the government has publicized: space, computerization, pharmaceuticals, nuclear energy and energy saving. These are five city streets. Then people form columns where they can see space and rocket launches, and above that there is a model of the International Space Station…

 

There’s the thing, though. Presumably, our pavilion aims not only to show what optimistic dreamers we are and how much we value beauty and love childhood, but also to display our technological achievements. To what degree do you think those two things are compatible?

I’ll be honest with you: we are seeing some success. There are halls at the pavilion for conferences and exhibits, and there is a gift shop. EXPO expects a minimum of 100 million visitors. One hundred million! This is Shanghai, a city of 28 million! Taking into account how organized they are, can you imagine how many people will come through here? And there are 240 exhibits. Even if you were to pick 50 of them, how fast would you have to move to see them all? Our towers will host meetings, round tables and the entire business program. The pavilion has access for disabled people and escalators. We have implanted a total of 20 exhibits: you can warm up with Baikal water, there is a solar-powered kitchen and so on. And our children, have a virtual presence in these buildings, they were recorded and are rendered as holograms. In 20 seconds, they explain to visitors in Russian and Chinese (with English and Russian subtitles) exactly what is being presented.

What we are doing here is not what people expected of Russia. Frankly, with all due respect for China, for their technology and their progress, they cannot do what we have done. We have found a rather strong point: our Russian art of theater and film. We would have gladly subcontracted this commission to China: it would have been both cheaper and easier in terms of logistics, but we have produced everything in Russia. They can copy, stamp, finish and mass-produce things. Getting the results that we get in our workshops, which are already being set up in Shanghai is possible only with our personnel, specially trained in the traditions of the Russian art of theater and screen props. We are very skilled in this. I’m serious. The Chinese can learn from us.