Words by Herbert Wright

Turkmenistan

Architecture Tilke
Area 1,500 sq m

From Stalin's time onwards, Soviet republics had pavilions in Moscow's VDNKh Park, and they remain today. Their architecture is usually a hybrid of local influence and Stalinist baroque -- Turkmenistan, for example, has an Islamic patterned, tiled screen facing out from a portico.

The ex-Soviet pavilions often sell local products, such as books and food.

It's fantastic to see that Turkmenistan is sticking to the formula at Expo 2015. The pavilion may look kitsch with its fountains, blue tiles and golden Islamic motifs, but there are major updates.

A side of the box building has a two-storey-high triangular screen to show Turkmen nature and people, the roof is green, and best of all, a scroll of Turkmen carpet lights up with LEDs beside the door! Such enchantments make the McDonald's next door seem vulgar...

When your correspondent visited, the place was closed -- the country's president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, would open it personally, soon. But I shuffled a full 15m in. The president, maybe 5m tall, waved from a poster. Glorious carpets hung below a central circular balcony lit in gold. And either side, shelves were being stocked with fruit, and women waited patiently to sell books. This pavilion is a time warp, and it carries a dream of a land with clear skies, clean faces, carpets, crops and a heroic future. That may have been an illusion in Soviet times, still peddled as darkness gathers in post-Independence skies, but the dream, glimpsed here, had a dignity we can scarcely know.