World Expo

Shanghai Corporate Joint Pavilion

130 X 194 cm     ac     2010/7/1

Nicknamed “The Magic Cube,” the Shanghai Corporate Joint Pavilion is an eco-building with intelligent technologies, dream-like atmospheres, and interactive experiences. Constructed by the Shanghai Guosheng Group and featuring two dozen other exhibitors, the architectural design concept is originated from the Taoist theory “A harmonious combination of heaven, earth and man”, and “Zhuang Zhou’s dream with butterfly,” an ancient Chinese romantic story with philosophical meanings. The Shanghai Corporate Pavilion provides visitors with a 17-minute interactive experience in four different zones – Sound of the City, Close to the Huangpu River, Road of Shanghai and Travel to the Future. Butterfly Professor Actress and director Xu Jinglei has starred as a butterfly professor in an eight-minute fantasy film that is shown at a 360-degree panoramic theater at the pavilion. She leads visitors through a dream-like interactive journey in pursuit of a city dream and a better future.

In this artwork, Dr. Chen takes the famous Shanghai cityscape and imbues it in a rainbow palette to symbolize hope and life. He also treats it in the Pointillism technique to echo the Pavilion’s “Cube-like” features. You can see the silhouette of buildings such as the Pudong Lujiazui landmark “Oriental Pearl” area, the Expo’s “Oriental Crown” and so on. The last development, Hongqiao, across the Huangpu River on behalf of the Lupu Bridge, is said to be the most critical since the reform and has become the basis for the redevelopment of Shanghai’s success under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and others’ efforts to unite the business community. Their slogan was “Unity, make it come true!”