Gallery Talks
Opening Reception for From Utopia to Ubiquity : The Moving Walkways at Expo ‘70
The allure of world expositions historically is that they are space-time exceptions where architectures of past and future collide in the present. Their architectural innovations propose and incubate new ways of living in cities, and many of the seemingly radical innovations presented end up acclimating into everyday life. A notable example is the moving walkways at the 1970 Osaka Expo (Expo ’70). Its designers synthesized a theoretical discourse around techno-utopian urbanism and the flourishing manufacturing industries of Japan in proposing a solution to manage the rapid densification of cities. Their present ubiquity belies their novelty just forty years ago – as a social apparatus, an aestheticization of technology, and transportation infrastructure.
As the name suggests, this exhibition traces how architectural ideas move from avant-garde imagination into vernacular life through the microhistory of moving walkways as urban infrastructure, with Expo ’70 as the nexus where disparate trajectories converged. Visitors are encouraged to dig through the archive folders and draw connections with the various materials on the gallery walls.
