The Czech Pavilion at EXPO said goodbye with a significant award

The World Expo EXPO 2015 in Milan, titled Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life, has concluded after six months. The Czech Pavilion, which was created using a somewhat unconventional modular method, experienced unprecedented success during the event. After a series of awards throughout the exhibition, it was ultimately honored with a bronze medal for architecture.

This year's Expo theme, whose main concept was created by the world-renowned architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, focused on recycling, the restoration of water resources, and ecology. This theme permeated all the buildings and determined their architectural appearance. The Czech Republic chose a modular recyclable system that enabled easy construction of the pavilion—completed among the first—as well as easy reconstruction and dismantling. The company KOMA engaged young architects Ondřej Chybík and Michal Krištof to collaborate on the architectural design of the pavilion, which won, among other things, due to its well-developed plan for further use. The pavilion is now being dismantled and will be brought back to the Czech Republic, where it will serve in Vizovice as the Center for Modular Architecture.

The Czech modular pavilion was on the radar of not only Italian media from the very beginning. Even before the start of the exhibition, it was recommended as one of the five pavilions worth visiting—right after the Italian one. During EXPO, it received several other awards as well. One of the most significant was the announcement of the architecturally best pavilions, in which the Czech stand was awarded a bronze medal. The United Kingdom's pavilion took first place, with Chile's pavilion receiving silver. Interestingly, while modular architecture is still viewed with skepticism in the Czech Republic, its advantages are appreciated abroad.

Winning the Bronze Medal at EXPO is truly a significant recognition, as similar accolades were received by the legendary pavilion at EXPO 1958 in Brussels, which won in the same competition and is still valued as a unique architectural work. So why did the current pavilion, for instance, not even make it to the shortlist in the Czech Building of the Year competition? Was the Milan EXPO really at such a poor level? And are competitions like Building of the Year genuinely professional and independent competitions that recognize only the highest quality projects? The question is whether there are too many high-quality buildings in our country that the Czech EXPO pavilion surpasses by a class, or conversely, whether we fail to recognize quality architecture when we see it with our own eyes. This article does not aim to convince that this year’s pavilion will be as iconic as the pavilion from 1958; however, it wants to emphasize that the building should be perceived comprehensively, i.e., over the entire lifespan of the structure. The modular pavilion, in the context of both the overall theme of the exhibition and general sustainability, deserves attention, particularly from the professional community, which may be full of prejudices.

It is evident that the professional community needs to become more acquainted with modular architecture. They will be able to do so in the reconstructed pavilion, which will serve as the aforementioned Center for Modular Architecture. The construction contractor, KOMA, which lent the pavilion to the Czech Republic, prioritized this usage over selling it to other interested parties. One of the reasons was precisely the desire to allow the public to familiarize themselves with modular architecture firsthand and discover its advantages and disadvantages.

Over 21 million people visited the Milan Expo 2015, with more than 10% of them visiting the Czech Pavilion. Visitors in the pavilion were able to learn about the Czech Republic, its regions, and Czech successes in the fields of science and modern technology. The most significant exhibits included the projects Lab of Silence, Lab of Life, and Earth of Stories and Fantasy. The sculpture by Lukáš Rittstein, nicknamed Autopták, became an important landmark of the entire exhibition.