The main theme for the 2015 Milan Expo is “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”, embracing technology, innovation, culture, traditions and creativity and how they relate to food and diet.
Our competition entry’s name was “SEENEVAIKUS (mushroom silence)”. We tried to create simple but strong visual identity in order not to sunk into amount of information in the Expo. Instead of introducing Estonia via video projections and series of posters, we would like to provide spatial and tactile experience.
Foraging
Estonia is a micro-country and could do well if it would therefore direct the attention to smaller alternative solutions which help to optimize the global resource circulation. One such alternative is traditional food-gathering – the ability and habit to turn towards nature and gather food yourself.
A peculiar set of statistics can be pointed out here – while Estonia ranks next to Taiwan in the Human Development Index and the literacy rate is one of the highest in the world, it is estimated that up to half of the population can be considered food-gatherers. At the same time the habit of mushroom or berry picking is waning in the West – even in those societies, which could be proud of their vast untouched nature (such as the Scandinavian countries).
Foraging is a way of motivating and actively involving people – to give them an incentive to go into the nature. This is especially important considering the recent developments in our social life (think in terms of IT for example).
Silence
It does not matter whether we take the highly competitive World Expo or the daily life as a metric – silence is still a very valuable and scarce resource. Information can be brought or consumed for free but the act of ‘buying’ silence is becoming rather tricky – one cannot simply pay an orchestra to stop them playing (as the show must go on).
Our exposition is deemed to show Estonia as a place where one could still easily enjoy silence. Over 50% of the total area of Estonia is covered with virtually untouched forests. The inhabitants can still remember that the forest acts as a food provider, and every second person has tried food-gathering himself.
Opening Up
The exposed pavilion area is open in a way which makes the entrance intuitive – one does not have to make a conscious decision to enter (especially considering the other pavilions filled with an abundance of information). Taking into account the fact that Estonia is a little known country with a limited budget, it would be rather complicated to erect a closed pavilion, which would be inviting enough in the given context.
On the other hand, our pavilion reinforces Estonia as a hospitable, inviting and open country. The good sides of the country can be experienced just as easily as the pavilion itself.
Location
Milan, Italy
Year
2013
Status
4th place in open competition
Size
440 m2
Client
EAS (Ettevõtluse Arendamise Sihtasutus)
Competition team
Hanno Grossschmidt, Tomomi Hayashi, Siim Endrikson
in collaboration with
Timo Toiger, Jüri Franciscus Lotman, Marti Laurimaa, Tauri Birken / VATSON
Teet Praks, Kristjan Maruste, Stemo Ojavee / PRISMATTERY
Kristjan Holm / KARABANA
Hannes Praks / HANNES PRAKS STUDIO
Märt Metsallik, Joel Kannimäe, Ott Tomik / Põhjaka Mõis restaurant
Consultants
Britt Samoson, fashion designer
Tarmo Tammekivi, wooden construction (MTÜ Rahvusliku Ehituse Selts)
