Rating: 4 out of 5

It’s not really reading, more looking at the pictures to be honest but…

I went to a design exhibition in London in 2011 and amongst the exhibits was a reproduction model of the Heatherwick studio design for the UK pavilion at the Shanghai world expo. It looked incredible. Last year, when in Munich, I spotted this book and thought it looked like it would give me an idea of some of the other pavilions that were on show. A good contrast. But, the book was too heavy to buy and lug back to England. So I kept an eye on ebay and when a reasonably priced edition came up, I bought it.

I’ve looked through this in an afternoon. It is mainly pictures. But it is also a beautiful thing. Very high quality photo essays focussing on 13 of the pavilions - expo, axis, chile, spain, france, UK, finland, denmark, luxembourg, germany, german-chinese house, uae, South Korea and shanghai corporate. Architectural drawings and photos from the installation are also included in the documentation section.

A lovely book to spend a few hours perusing.

Originally posted to my Goodreads account