The Montreal World Exposition 1967
The avantgardistic concept failed

Year: 1967 City: Montreal Country: Canada Duration: 28th April - 27th October 1967

1  Copyright: Baumeister, Bd. 64, Juli 1967, S 875

Originally, a small group of members of the organizing committee had set itself the ambitious aim of doing away with national pavilions. They designed a complex structure of large, somewhat amorphous theme pavilions, to which the various countries would have been able to contribute with their own architects or else only with exhibits, depending on their needs. Each building was to present the exhibits in a vertical and horizontal continuity; there was to be the possibility of extending the buildings if a company or a country wanted to present a special aspect of a theme more intensively. This avant-garde concept was destined to fail in the face of economic and political realities, despite the enthusiastic acclaim by a number of foreign participants. And so the well-known mixture of national and company pavilions was stuck with and was supplemented by the theme exhibition.

The financial problems that arose during preparation of the exhibition meant that the buildings intended for the theme exhibitions noticeably shrank in size and their concept became watered down. Only a few nations participated with significant exhibits, for example France, which contributed relics from Yves Cousteau's underwater research expeditions for the complex 'Man and the Sea'. From the Netherlands there was a model of the Zuider Zee, which demonstrated advances in land reclamation. Large-format photographs of oceans and divers in a giant glass cylinder illustrated the dimensions of the submarine worlds. It was therefore the problem for every theme exhibition to knit the certainly impressive, but also relatively random exhibits and fragmentary information into a uniform, high-class and graphically appealing complex.