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Biber Architects' American Pavilion at Milan Expo 2015 to Honor Food Trucks and Vertical Farming

Biber Architects' American Pavilion at Milan Expo 2015 to Honor Food Trucks and Vertical Farming

 

The United States will celebrate one of its most prized national treasures at the next World’s Fair: the food truck. In honor of the theme of the 2015  Milano Expo—“Feed the Planet, Energy for Life”—the American Pavilion, called American Food 2.0, includes street-level food trucks that will serve up some favorite American dishes. James Biber, the New York City–based architect of the pavilion, told Business Insider, it’s not been decided which food trucks will be included at the site, but that there will be lobster rolls “for sure.”

But the pavilion design doesn’t end with food trucks.

 

The pavilion’s most visually distinctive feature, is its hydroponic facade—or, a football-field-length,vertical farm that is planted with harvestable crops. “It is as though a typical horizontal field was rotated (think Inception with a farm field standing in for Paris) to become the side of a building,” said Biber Architects in a statement. “It’s not our proposal for serious urban or vertical farming, which is usually indoors, but a didactic display talking about the past, present, and future of the American farm, and the American diet.”

Behind the vertical farm is an airplane hangar-sized door, which opens the structure to the public. A “boardwalk” made of recycled lumber from American boardwalks takes viewers from the first floor to the second. Above that is a roof-top terrace, which is partially covered in a glass shade and photovoltaic panels.

Biber told Architectural Record that the masterplan for the Expo, which was partially designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is “the most urban” he’s ever seen. Lots at the site are only 20-feet-wide to create a more dense fabric. The Expo opens its doors to the public on May 1, 2015.

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