Visitable until 13 October is the World Expo of Osaka, the Japanese city’s second. If in 1970 the future envisioned was one of steel and concrete, this time the fair is a sampling of sustainable construction that will leave no built legacy: the premises will be totally dismantled to let the artificial island recover its port function.

To cover this huge event, Arquitectura Viva presents a full article signed by Néstor Montenegro, Fernando Muñoz, Rocío Pina, and Carmelo Rodríguez, the designers of the Spanish Pavilion, who highlight the conceptual swerve of an exposition historically characterized by excess and deficits. It is followed by a dossier of twelve national participations that features interesting exercises in innovation, in which local sugi wood will either give the buildings a second life or return materials to the production chain.

For its part, the Art and Culture section showcases two other events that regularly figure on the calendar of the discipline: the Venice Architecture Biennale, visited by Alberto Ballesteros and Enrique Morillo; and the Milan Triennale, reviewed by Fulvio Irace. The usual News and Books sections are completed with an essay where Luis Fernández-Galiano assesses the political and economic reactions that have had no respite since the major blackout in Spain’s electrical grid.

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