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Nature's Wisdom: Garden of Fantasy and Music

In developing the plans for the exposition in the Czech Pavilion, its creators based their ideas on the main theme of Expo 2005 in Aichi, "Nature's Wisdom," and the sub-theme "The Art of Life." As the members of the creative team themselves note: "To be quite honest, it's a really broad theme and almost anything could be included within it. But we do associate certain values with the wisdom of nature and the art of living: nature, purity, constant change, transience and ephemerality, harmony, the cycle of life and an awareness of death, humility. We're confident that with a sense for poetry we'll do well in Japan."

In contrast with previous years, Czech representatives are not designing their own building but are using a standardized pavilion that they will try to give an original appearance. For the first time in many years, Czech participation in Expo 2005 is being directed by an integrated team consisting of a scene writer, artist, architect and director, each of whom contribute to the plan.

This creative and implementation team has created a dreamlike interactive space full of musical instruments and lighting that the visitors themselves will be able to control. The main exhibition, entitled "Garden of Fantasy and Light" is designed to create an atmosphere of emotion and fun, full of changes and surprises.

The exterior faćade by Barbora Škorpilová is meant to express energy and movement and to symbolize a sort of vertical meadow. As she explains, "We were searching for some kind of abbreviation for that feeling. At the same time we wanted the exterior of the pavilion to be related to and supplement the interior exhibition, which is based on the principles of playfulness, movement and random sounds."

The fact that the faćade extends from the Czech Pavilion reflects the playfulness of the exhibition and offers a contemporary design. At a distance, a wavy surface made up of repeated elements - tapered wooden poles - is reminiscent of both an elegantly shaped curve and a multiform structure not dissimilar from natural motifs. Thanks to their numbers - in the thousands - and the various slight changes in the orientation of each element, the building will seem to change with the movements of the visitors, as if it were in a constant state of motion, in a way having been brought to life.

The conception for the main portion of the exhibition is based on the active contribution of each and every visitor; the supposition here is that each of us carries the spark of creativity. Nature will be recalled through the expression of its innate qualities: light, darkness, movement, stillness, tones and voices.

There will be no items that use electronics, computers or video projectors inside the pavilion. The only impulse for a musical instrument to ring out or a light source to start vibrating will be the touch of the visitors and thus the space will be filled with an unending and ever-changing symphony. The Garden of Fantasy and Music will become an open, creative field, a place for pausing and reflecting on oneself.

Visual effects will function using the simple principles of the camera obscura. They will reflect the pavilion's exterior or its inte rior contents. Other visual effects will be kaleidoscope systems, decomposing and incorporating their surroundings.

Musical instruments will resonate using various natural materials; some of them will open into pools of water. Instruments will be randomly placed throughout the space and will together create one synthetic, interconnected organism.

The overall project designer is Jiří Černý. The designers of the individual elements are Petr Lorenc, Ondřej Smeykal, Martin Janíček, Jaroslav Kořán and Petr Nikl.

Miloslava Kumbárová

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