Word: expo
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...buildings one might encounter in Miami or a well-to-do Arizona suburb. Over $ the past decade or two, as stylistic jags and economics have made buildings in the real world flimsier, zanier and culturally mongrelized, real-world architecture has pretty much converged with world's fair architecture, and Expo '92 can be judged by virtually the same standards by which one judges, say, Houston...
...growing inside. The Netherlands' eco-pavilion is exemplary, novel and fun. An open steel superstructure crisscrossed by escalators and ramps, this not-quite-a-building is wrapped, as if by a Whole Earth Christo, in perpetually waterlogged canvas netting, meant to cool the interior by 10 degrees or more. Expo '92, like the 1939 and 1964 world's fairs, also has its obligatory giant globe, in this case a 70-ft. "bioclimatic sphere" that pumps out a fine cooling mist over a vast stretch of outdoor space...
...CHOCKABLOCK with fountains, almost all of them officially described as new-age outdoor-air-conditioning systems. Water gushes and gurgles almost everywhere. Architect Nicholas Grimshaw's pavilion for the United Kingdom, a fine, robust example of the high-tech style at which the British excel, is the grandest, sleekest Expo aquatecture of all: the whole plate-glass facade, 60 ft. high and 235 ft. long, is a waterfall. A lovely, quirkier glass-wall waterfall, the work of the New York architecture firm SITE, defines a promenade along one of the Expo avenues. For almost a quarter- mile...
...iceberg in an indoor pond. But it's the well-conceived, meticulously wrought Norwegian pavilion that triumphs in the ice-water category. In fact, Norway's building, a witty, sublime little Constructivist jewel box designed by Oslo architect Pal Henry Engh, is among the best at Expo...
...Expo does not suffer in the comparison. There are a dozen works of intriguing, even distinguished architecture. Some of the 100-odd buildings seem commissioned by clueless bureaucrats inclined to toll-booth architecture, and several by well-intentioned arts-and-crafts types, but the surprise is how many compelling, even cutting-edge buildings have been put up. And there is not much correlation between national wealth and pavilion quality. A few small countries can be very proud, and some big, rich countries ought to be embarrassed...