Italy

Architecture Studio Nemesi & Partners

Area 14,400 sq m

The Italian structures are all over the Expo, and include the long, two-storey Eataly restaurant buildings that look like American motels, the 37m-high flower-power tower, the Tree of Life, by Orgoglio Brescia, and various regional displays in buildings along the Cardo, the Expo's north-south avenue. But the main national display is in Studio Nemesi's Palazzo Italia, a building that on the outside looks like a six-storey office block partially wrapped in a white Bird's Nest-style outer skin. There is 9,000 sq m of this exterior Italian concrete, developed with high recycled content and an active 'biodynamic' ingredient to absorb pollutants.

From in its slightly unfinished inner atrium, the building can be read as a deconstructivist composition of four volumes linked in a ring, which effectively start a floor up, above bases of the white-weave concrete, then spread gently with height towards a high-tech metallic roof canopy with photovoltaic glass. The metaphor here is trees.

As for the exhibition, it's a great trek through various displays, including a mysterious dark room with thunder and flashes representing chaos, spectacular mirror rooms filled with luminous images of Italy, and vitrines with holograph-like animations about Italian food technologies (the UAE has similar displays). It's a strange mix of the inspirational, the intriguing, and the absurd ('A World Without Italy?' leads to a European relief map... with no Italy).

The Palazzo Italia is a curious, bulky feature on the Expo skyline, but quite an adventure inside.

Continue for Holy See or read:

The making of Wolfgang Butruss' UK Pavilion

Milan Expo 2015: From Blueprint's point of view