Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai.
I visited this Expo more than a dozen times.
This work is not a photographic record of a single night at the Expo.
It is composed of only a very small selection from the enormous number of photographs I took during more than a dozen visits to the site.
From daylight to dusk.
And then into the night, enveloped in light.
The Expo site changed its expression with the passing of time, and every single moment possessed a beauty that could never be seen in exactly the same way again.
At the center of all of this stood the Grand Roof Ring designed by Sou Fujimoto.
I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the Grand Roof Ring was the greatest architectural structure in human history.
It was truly a magnificent work of architecture.
As readers of this column already know, I wrote again and again that the Grand Roof Ring should have been preserved after the Expo and handed down to future generations as a National Treasure of Japan.
There can be no doubt whatsoever that the Grand Roof Ring was one of the major reasons for the tremendous success of Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai.
It embraced people who had gathered from all over the world, invited them to walk, to stop, and connected the sky, the sea and the entire Expo site into a single landscape.
It was not merely a building.
It was the immense stage that symbolized the Expo itself, an overwhelming presence that remained in the memories of everyone who saw it.
Using wood, a material humanity has lived with since ancient times, it created a space of such extraordinary scale, such extraordinary beauty and such extraordinary modernity.
Within it, the history and technology of Japanese architecture and the creative power of the present age came together magnificently.
I repeatedly proposed that this structure should never have been allowed to disappear simply because it had been built as a temporary facility for the Expo.
I argued that it should have been preserved as a cultural heritage that future generations of Japanese people, and people from all over the world, could continue to see.
Had my proposal been realized, today, on this brilliantly clear day appearing between the long rains of September, an almost unbelievable number of Osaka citizens would have been getting off the subway at Yumeshima Station and climbing onto the Grand Roof Ring.
Furthermore, had the land inside the Ring been transformed into a National Botanical Garden, it would be no exaggeration to say that Osaka could have gone from being one of the world’s great cities to becoming the greatest city in the world.
The photographs in this work represent only a tiny selection from the enormous number of photographs I took during more than a dozen visits to Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai.
Even so, I hope they convey something of the light, the colors, the people, and above all, the overwhelming presence of the Grand Roof Ring that has now been lost.
Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai.
These are 134 photographs selected from the many hours I spent walking through it, looking at it, and photographing it over more than a dozen visits.