Osaka is, for the second time, organising the Universal Exhibition after the last time in 1970. Osaka 2025’s mission is to act as a laboratory for innovation and expert knowledge to build the society of the future around the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and to share them with as many people as possible. The France Pavilion has marked an important stage in the project today in Tokyo by officially signing off the building contracts for and the permanent staging of the Osaka 2025 France Pavilion.
The winners of the architectural and construction competition are the French firms of architects Coldefy and the Italian design and innovation agency CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati; they are working in association with the integrated design and construction consultancy Rimond, and the Coloco landscaping consultancy, civil engineering consultancy Bollinger & Grohmann and the sustainable strategy consultants Ramboll.
The permanent exhibition will be designed by visual artist Emard and staged by GSM Project, the exhibition and staging team. It will be produced by Expomobilia, a general contractor for international exhibitions, working together with the lighting designers 8’18’’ and Topager’s landscape gardeners.
Jacques Maire, the President Of COFREX and the Chief Curator of the France Pavilion says “This is a crucial stage that enables France to prepare for our presence in Tokyo under the best circumstances possible, against a backdrop in Japan where costs are high and there are shortages of manpower and construction materials. The COFREX Board of Directors and juries unanimously adopted the two strong proposals that showcase the image of France in a highly innovative way, while continuing to respect our ecological commitments, the budget assigned to the project and our partners’ support.
These outstanding teams, headed up by two renowned French talents with a Franco-Italian team for construction and an international one for the staging, will enable France to express the admiration it has for Japan, and to provide its young people with an exceptional experience.
Thomas Coldefy, Founder and Director of Coldefy & Associates says ”world expos are the perfect platform for innovating in the spheres of design and architecture. The France Pavilion will showcase France’s unique ‘savoir-faire’, and at the same time show how we humans can pursue a closer relationship with the natural world and reconcile architecture with landscapes, while continuing to offer an alternative vision for our shared future.”
The artist Justine Emard says, “The France Pavilion at the Osaka Kansai World Expo is designed to be a living work of art. The permanent exhibition will be an invitation to the general public to take a poetic journey through it, alongside the different kinds of intelligence found in the world, be it human, animal, plant-based or artificial. It will create a dialogue between the arts, the sciences, technology and landscapes, based on a fusion of all the energies of the Pavilion’s designers and partners.”
The Osaka 2025 France Pavilion’s architecture will be unveiled in Autumn 2023 It will be located in the “Empowering Lives” zone, close to the Japan Pavilion and the World Expo entrance. It will provide a shop window for France’s economic social and cultural attributes and so will contribute to France’s attractiveness and prestige to the 28 million visitors expected to visit from Japan and worldwide. The Expo will be held between 13 April and 13 October 2025, on the site of the artificial Yumeshima Island. Its theme will be “Designing tomorrow’s society, imagining our lives in the future” around three distinct spaces: “Saving Lives”, “Connecting Lives” and “Empowering Lives”