The winners of the competition for the project of the France Pavilion at Expo 2025, the French studio Coldefy and the Italian CRA, Carlo Ratti Associati, together with Italo Rota, recently publicly presented “Theatrum Naturae.”
Like a theater where the natural meets the artificial, the pavilion will showcase the diversity and richness of the French landscape, as well as new relationships between people and 21st-century France’s approach to culture and the environment.
“As we try to explore the role of exhibitions in the context of the climate crisis, we must look for new ways to present the relationship between the natural and the artificial.” Author Carlo Ratti explains the concept of the project, emphasizing that “by bringing together different forms of intelligence, organic or technological, we can redefine the connections between people and nature.”
Conceptually, the pavilion will offer viewers a visiting route in 3 “acts” – ascent, discovery of nature, return to earth. In practice, it will be built from prefabricated and natural elements that meet the principles of sustainable development, as well as the idea of reusing and recycling building materials.
Rising from ground level through the proscenium, people will find themselves on a large staircase winding through the pavilion space. The ascent along it clearly symbolizes ascent as a somewhat idealized path of scientific and technological discoveries for humanity.
The staircase represents the highest and optimal vantage point from which one can see the entire volume of the structure and the path taken by other visitors. The highest point offers a view of the terrace, where the materialization of the discovery of nature appears before the eyes of visitors. Simply put, there is a large garden structured like a landscape, with plants showcasing the diversity of France’s environment, from the mountains to the coast.
Like the ending of the play, this space reveals the final and perhaps most important theme of the entire work: return to earth. Thus, at the peak of ascension in the literal and figurative sense of the word, we find ourselves faced with a symbolic and characteristic choice for humanity as a whole: observe nature from afar or try to join it. By inviting you to go out onto the terrace, the designers reveal their recipe for behavior, and this, of course, is reunification with nature.
Judging by the first, just-released images, from the outside, the France pavilion will be equipped with facades resembling a high blank fence on three sides, and on the fourth, it will immediately show visitors an impressive interior, which refers to a traditional fair theater. However, the intrigue remains: to get to the earthly paradise in French, everyone will have to go up and down.