Results of the competition for the pavilion design for EXPO 2010

Conceptual Idea, Libretto, and Design of the Exhibition and Pavilion
In the concept of "Fruits of Imagination," we strive to fully respect the main theme of Expo 2010 "Better City – Better Life" as well as the theme of the Czech exhibition "Fruits of Civilization." We have also taken into account the interests of the Czech Republic to make the Czech exhibition a bridge to stronger economic relations with China. Last but not least, we aimed to create the most pleasant environment for the restaurant, which often indirectly influences the overall success of the pavilion.
Our fundamental idea for fulfilling the themes of the exhibition arises from the conviction that every person becomes an architect of future cities and the improvement of life within them from childhood, as well as a promising bearer of "fruits of civilization." Thus, as children, they built cities, for example, from wooden colored blocks, inhabited them, and unwittingly created new civilizational fruits. In adulthood, many of these child creators build real cities, protect the old, and create new civilizational fruits. Many of them are also in the Czech Republic. From the fruits left to us by our ancestors, through contemporary, improving urban agglomerations, factories, environmental protection, and cultural values, to bold plans for the future, the realization of which is in many cases literally at hand.
The adult visitor of the Czech exhibition will return for a moment to childhood, thus becoming a child for a few moments. The child visitor will find the exhibition environment reminiscent of their childhood world, full of dreams and bold plans for the future. Without realizing it, the adult visitor feels like a child even before entering the Czech pavilion. Then, while exploring the exhibition itself, they find themselves in a real child's world, specifically in a city built from colorful wooden construction sets, from blocks, pyramids, arches, and other typical building shapes. The block city built by the child evokes in the adult visitor their childhood, dreams, and bold plans, so they can witness the transformation of these childhood dreams into real buildings, inventions, and civilizational fruits, including a vision of the future. More realistic information about the fruits of Czech civilization will be seen by those visitors who attend the Media Hall. There they will have the opportunity to watch an unusual film "Czech Republic from the Vltava," whose "golden thread" is the Vltava River from its source to Prague and from it "clip trips," not only to attractive places in our country but also to non-commercial reminders or examples of Czech craftsmanship (Hotel Ještěd, Dancing House in Prague, etc.).
Some visitors will surely be tempted by the beautiful restaurant built on a typical Czech square, lined with medieval arcading, as they leave the exhibition. On the corner of the square is a shop, and in its part, there is a cleverly hidden live billboard promoting Czech companies or products.

Description of the Pavilion Cladding Design
Visitors to the European Square of the Expo, or coming via the elevated walkway, will certainly be captivated by the Czech pavilion from a distance. The pavilion’s cladding represents the natural world that surrounds us, thus surrounding cities as well. The endless expanse of sky in a bright blue, filled with clean air and floating clouds, creates the atmosphere of settlements that are the standard for healthy life without the emissions and stress of the modern city.
At dusk, the pavilions' façades along with the clouds will be colored by built-in lights, evoking a setting sun or rising moon. The pavilion's cladding thus changes color every evening, providing visitors with additional sensations and experiences.
On the original construction of the pavilion, two facing claddings are suspended. The first cladding is made of "Cembonit" panels, measuring 120 x 300 cm, which unifies and covers the original construction of the pavilion. The panels are left in their natural gray color. The second cladding is a tensioned perforated semi-permeable fabric into which bubbles of clouds are sewn. These form a spatial construction based on pneumatic principles. They are continuously inflated by small built-in fans, and in the evening, they are programmed to be illuminated by "LED" lights. The semi-permeable fabric was chosen primarily for its integrity in large format execution, affordability, and also for the ability to allow daylight to pass to the façade cladding, which can be significant if an agreement is reached with the expo management for the realization of windows on the façade to the offices of KGK.
On the outer cladding of each façade, there is the marking of the Czech Republic with the flag and text, in both English and Chinese (see visuals and model). The Expo will undoubtedly be often featured in aerial film shots (from an airplane); therefore, we recommend placing the inscription "Czech Republic" in both English and Chinese versions also on the roof of the pavilion.
Part of the southern façade with the main entrance is the placement of a projection screen and suspended plasma monitors, which broadcast filmed situations in front of the pavilion and attract the attention of both passersby and visitors waiting in line.

Description of the Outdoor Space Utilization in Front of the Pavilion
In front of the southern entrance, there is a paved area, which is only functionally adjusted with a short ramp and mobile layout for organizing the line. The space incorporates freely placed colorful blocks - enlarged children's construction sets, which simultaneously create elevated mini-stage spaces and allow for the movement of a children's clown. Visitors queue from the entrance of the pavilion on the area between the colorful blocks.
The clown, threading through visitors or standing on individual building blocks, resembles a child's puppet or marionette. He has a typical red nose, large colorful shoes, clown clothing, and a clown hat.
A tiny television micro-camera is placed in the hat. Another static camera captures the front view of the crowd of arriving or slowly progressing visitors. Above the entrance to the pavilion is an LED wall. In addition, several large television screens are suspended perpendicular to the pavilion's wall. On them, arriving visitors see "themselves," i.e., semi-full shots of the audience line, interspersed with details of visitors laughing at the clown’s antics. Other viewers on the large LED wall see how the clown pulls the adult viewers by the ears or nose as if they were children, while others are temporarily given a colorful clown nose or showered with colorful paper confetti. In short, waiting people, just like children, are entertained by the clown’s tricks.
In this way, we aim to amuse waiting visitors, who will undoubtedly be entertained not only by seeing themselves on the screens but also by other mostly smiling visitors watching the children’s clown or being teased by him. Moreover, visitors are drawn into the child’s world, into which they will soon enter.

Detailed Description of Individual Parts of the Exhibition
Thus prepared, visitors enter the exhibition – the children’s construction city.
The exhibition itself consists of spatial structures of parts of the city made of enlarged children's building blocks, which children have created in their imagination. The structures evoke the atmosphere of an ideal city where both residents and visitors feel comfortable. Individual building elements – blocks, are enlargements of real children's blocks and are therefore meant to impact the exhibition visitors.
Upon entering the pavilion (exhibition), visitors must navigate around a large assembly of colorful blocks representing the STATION, and thus divide into two streams: one stream enters the exhibition on the right side, the other on the left. They then find themselves in a block-colored city that is in macro dimensions, as if a child had built it in their room. The macro size, along with the large construction blocks, is also echoed by figures from "Don't Upset Me!", which stand in the streets, shops, parks, restaurants, and other areas of the children’s city. Because the figures are larger than adult people, adult visitors feel much smaller than they actually are, thus like children. This dimension is also reminded by other attributes of a child's city or room. For example, a life-sized colorful car reminiscent of toy cars, or a giant colorful pencil propped against one of the blocks, and so forth.
Exhibition visitors move through the winding labyrinth of streets of the children's city, around the SHOP where figures from "Don't Upset Me!" serve as shopkeepers, while other figures resemble buyers or guests of the RESTAURANT. Exhibition visitors walk across the BRIDGE OVER THE VLTAVA, through the PARK, where typical construction-set trees are, around the CINEMA, and between SKYSCRAPERS, etc.
Gradually, visitors reach the square in front of the THEATER, which is the exhibition's centerpiece. There is a large computer keyboard, which also serves as a stage on which the same children’s clown entertains visitors, as he did before they entered the pavilion. He hops on the keyboard and communicates with people as if he were communicating with children. He offers them a program on a gigantic computer monitor, which is part of the children’s room where the construction city is built.
The clown struggles with a huge pencil hanging on a strong rubber band from the ceiling, trying to press one of the keys with this pencil or—at another moment—with his foot. When he succeeds, clips gradually appear on the large monitor behind him, in which visitors quickly recognize realized children’s dreams, "the fruits of our civilization," i.e., "FRUITS OF IMAGINATION"! The clips are filmed in a poetic style by cameraman Jan Malíř under the direction of Filip Renč (the content of the individual clips – themes - is in article "e"). The short clips, illustrating the fruits of our, thus Czech civilization, are gradually launched by the clown for the visitors who have walked through the children's construction city and now find themselves in front of the computer, watching the most interesting Czech buildings, products, and "fruits of imagination," i.e., both present and future, which have emerged from former children’s dreams and ideas.
The audience captivated by the Czech exhibition and its point—the clips launched by the clown—can visit the Media Hall, a room where they can sit in cinema seats and watch a several-minute film "Czech Republic from the Vltava" on a large screen. In the film, also directed by Filip Renč with cameraman Jan Malíř, the Czech Republic is presented in an unusual way through a ride along the Vltava River and from it, "clip trips" to various parts of the Czech Republic (see the synopsis of the film script in article "e").
The real construction set is made of colored wood. Enlargements of construction blocks will be produced from structural sheet materials based on wood and will be painted in pastel colors to create a compact and seamless look at the corner joints. Trees, car models, and so on, will also be produced this way. The stage for the clown—the keyboard—aims to look like a real plastic keyboard from a computer. The floor in the exhibition is a load-resistant mat for sports surfaces (Tartan), which will be inset in various colors into graphic shapes—pedestrian crossings, lawns, etc.
The interior space of the exhibition is scenically artificially lit so that a uniform atmosphere and backdrop of the exhibition can be maintained throughout the day. The inner walls of the pavilion will remain in their industrial technical form. On the walls of the pavilion, which are mostly masked from the inside, large projection screens will be placed, onto which children’s drawings of the city will be projected as created by the children. In some areas, there are "stationary" bases of children’s drawings that are immediately "completed" by an "invisible hand" and then disappear from view. The theme of the drawings signifies various worlds of building, transport, and nature, presented as a world of children’s imagination, leading the visitor to reflection and motivating them to develop imagination as a future creator of a healthy city.

Description of Individual Exhibits
Describing individual parts of the construction children's city is difficult and unnecessary. As previously mentioned, the construction city is assembled from a series of fragments characterizing a real city:

• STATION
• SHOPS
• SKYSCRAPERS
• CINEMA
• BRIDGE
• PARK
• PASSAGE
• PLAYGROUND
• FOUNTAIN
• THEATER

At the corners of streets or at individual fragments of the city, there are hanging signs representing street names. Unlike real cities, they only have children’s drawings characterizing individual parts of the construction city (Station, Cinema, Bridge, etc.).
The walk through this children's construction city will give visitors the overall impression that they have briefly become a child who, with childlike imagination and through the city made of building blocks, created civilizational fruits that they will realize in the future. The realization of these fruits of children’s imagination will be specifically explained on the monitor of a children's computer at the end of the exhibition – the theater.
The children’s clown gradually launches short ten-second clips for the watching audience on the monitor, in which children's dreams undergo a trick transformation into the actual fruits of our civilization.
Before leaving the exhibition, visitors will stop at the statue from Charles Bridge, placed on a black round pedestal, surrounded and protected by a wide glass cylinder. Above the statue is a cleverly designed, circularly moving light device that allows for casting a moving shadow of the statue onto some sort of sundial, which runs far faster than real time. The movement of time can thus be observed by the human eye, and in contrast to the baroque statue within the futuristic glass cylinder, it reminds us not only of the swiftly passing time but also closes both mottos of the exhibition: "Better City – Better Life" and "Fruits of Civilization."
Part of the exhibition is Media Hall, where visitors can peacefully watch on a large screen a several-minute film "Czech Republic from the Vltava."

Restaurant and Shop
Upon exiting the Czech pavilion, one can look down an alley into a very attractive romantic restaurant, which will undoubtedly tempt many Expo visitors. We will strive to ensure, with the expo management's agreement, that a separate entrance to the restaurant can be realized on the western façade of the pavilion. The design considers an exit from the exhibition on the western façade simultaneously as an entrance to the restaurant. If it were possible to negotiate a separate entrance next to the existing exhibition exit, it would not only improve operational efficiency but also allow a view into the restaurant from the European square of the Expo, as this entrance would be glazed.
The restaurant segment is a separate functional and operational unit, where the goal was to create a unique atmosphere of a historical town square. The restaurant tables are placed on the paved square, surrounded by historical facades of houses.
Guests enter the restaurant along typical Old Town paving. In the middle of the square is a "three o'clock" on a column (alternative: a vase-like fountain with flowing water). The square – restaurant – is lined with houses with arcading, where restaurant tables are set. In one of the arcades is a large bar counter, around which waiters flow from the kitchen located on the ground floor of the house behind it into the restaurant and back. Before entering the square restaurant, guests walk past a shop with Czech souvenirs, where one can purchase "everything Czech," including puppets of the children’s clown moving in the exhibition, or small replicas of the statue from Charles Bridge that concludes the Czech exhibition. In the shop, on the wall behind the sales counter, there is an LED screen that displays advertising slogans of the main advertising partners of the Czech Expo.
When a restaurant guest sits at a table in the picturesque square, they can watch on a live billboard advertising clips similar to those the guest just saw on the exhibition monitor. However, unlike the exhibition, these clips are entirely concrete and advertising or marketing-enhanced so that it is evident that "the Czech Octavia is rolling out of that factory hall," or that in the Švejk-style pub "Plzeňský Prazdroj" is being drunk, or that the Czech "Let L 159" is flying over the town, and so forth, including the logos of these main advertising partners of the Czech exhibition. In the restaurant, we can afford this unlike in the exhibition! And if the management of the Czech exhibition places, for example, its business guest in a suitable spot in this restaurant, they can inconspicuously, even subconsciously, observe "their" advertisements together.

Meeting Room and Other Spaces
The Meeting Room and office facilities will be specially designed only in the representative areas, reception, and VIP meeting rooms. As a connection of the Czech Republic with a successful period when Czech design made a mark on the world stage, the Brussels 58 style seems to be regaining popularity. In these VIP interiors, modern replicas of seating table furniture, including lighting, will be designed, developed, and manufactured in small series for EXPO 2010 and could initiate a further phase of the NEO Brussels style.