Expo after Expo

Eight photographers' look at the urban and environmental legacy of seven Expos

Six years ago, at the Triennale, the Order of Architects of Milan set up the photographic exhibition Expo-After-Expo. Milan had recently been chosen to host EXPO 2015, and after the initial euphoria, work began on organising the project, not without contrasts. Out of a spirit of collaboration, as architects, we decided to immediately focus on the post-Expo problem, particularly from a physical, architectural and functional point of view. Using five photographic campaigns to show the real state of the sites of five past  European expos seemed to be the elementary starting point to trigger a discussion and awareness of a public administration that was about to set up, in an urban situation as dense and complex as that of Milan, an infrastructure covering 1 million square metres.

Obvious suggestion: Learn from the experiences of others..

We organised five public meetings where those responsible for those past exhibitions explained the goals, the tools used and the problems faced. They pointed out errors and problems from before, during and after. Alongside the five photo campaigns, these contributions pointed out in advance the real matter of the entire EXPO operation: the need for an urban, economic and architectural project that would allow governed transit from the festive congestion of the planetary fair to a useful infrastructure for the entire national community.

The Moratti and Formigoni administrations paid absolutely no attention to the whole operation. No one ever attended these public meetings, not even to listen, despite many invitations. The story of the first two years wasted in squabbles and power games to exploit the enormous cake tells of a short-sighted and quarrelsome political and administrative class that knowingly steered the Expo towards the classic condition of emergency, a condition in which the guarantees of transparency, fairness and public efficiency vanish into the fog of political and business lobbies.

With Expo 2015 almost over and after an undeniable success in terms of visitors and image, the logic of emergency is renewed. The functional and physical future of the area was not prepared by a path of investigation of economic and urban planning policy. A path that should have begun at least two years ago in order to arrive at well thought-out choices, not dictated by the emergency situation and capable of triggering virtuous and transparent mechanisms in the decision-making processes in the implementation of projects and the awarding of contracts. Today, in this open and fluid situation, we call for a well-founded and careful discussion of the functional and architectural fate of a piece of the city within the remaining time limits. In this exhibition, the five photographic campaigns of 2009 are joined by reportage on the Shanghai Expo which ended in 2010 and the Milan Expo which has just ended and about whose future the discussion is open.