Expo Design Delegation Insights / Osaka Expo 2025 / World Expo Impact

10/22/25

From Osaka to Minnesota — A Design Delegation Insight

As we convened our “Design Delegation to Expo 2025 Osaka” — a cross-discipline team of horticulture, architecture, infrastructure, programming and cultural-exchange leaders from Expo 2031-USA’s Organizing Entity — our purpose was clear: to listen, learn and translate the most contemporary World-Expo practices into the design of the first international horticultural exhibition in the U.S., to be hosted in Minnesota.

Here’s how we approached it, what we learned – and how this will directly inform Expo 2031’s horticultural, built- and program- environments.

Purpose & Approach

• Brought together senior leaders in horticulture, landscape architecture, infrastructure, health and wellbeing, food production, global event and living-exhibition design to survey Osaka’s gardens, green-infrastructure and outdoor-exhibit strategies.

• Included architects and infrastructure planners to deeply examine pavilion construction, material reuse, timber-forward systems, modularity, and place-making at scale.

• Convened programming & culture leads to study how the “three zones” of Expo 2025 (“Saving Lives / Empowering Lives / Connecting Lives”) shape visitor flow, narrative arcs and global-exchange forums.

• Engaged direct site visits to the major pavilions, interactive installations and the larger venue master-plan on Yumeshima Island — to explore how horticulture, architecture and infrastructure interlock at a world-class exposition like we are designing in the United States.

• Convened post-visit workshops in Minnesota to translate those lessons into actionable frameworks for our Expo 2031 horticultural mega-event: from soil-substrate PIFs, modular greenhouse pavilions, to living labs and global-exchange programming zones.

Key Take-aways for Expo 2031

• Horticulture as “living pavilion”: At Osaka the gardens and outdoor environments aren’t secondary; the outdoor spaces serve as immersive exhibits, living narrative zones, and infrastructure conduits. We must design the Minnesota event’s horticultural zones not just as display, but as active habitats, labs and social-nodes.

• Timber + circular material systems in architecture: The architecture of Osaka demonstrates bold use of timber and modular systems designed for reuse. For example, the host construction of a massive wooden ring structure (Grand Ring) sets a precedent. In Minnesota we can design horticultural pavilions with the same ethos: disassembly, reuse, minimal carbon footprint.

• Site infrastructure & visitor flow as narrative: The Osaka site is zoned, layered, and choreographed. For Minnesota, we must plan horticulture and architecture in tandem so that garden-paths, climate-zones, infrastructure corridors (water, energy, shade) become part of the visitor story.

• Programming built around global themes & exchange: The “Saving Lives / Empowering Lives / Connecting Lives” sub-themes at Osaka map elegantly onto horticulture: saving biodiversity/life, empowering communities (urban agriculture, food security), connecting cultures & ecosystems. Our horticultural expo programming should reflect similar themes: global garden foreshadowing, educational farms, exchange gardens, and interactive infrastructure.

• Legacy orientation: Many Osaka pavilions emphasized disassembly, reuse, second-life. Our major horticultural structures should be designed for legacy: repurposing into botanical gardens, research-hubs, community assets in Minnesota.

• Integration of nature + architecture: Pavilions such as the Better Co‑being Pavilion blur the boundary of building and landscape — no strict walls, canopy over trees, architecture as forest-scape.  For our horticultural expo we should treat architecture not as separate from the garden but as embedded within it.

Best-in-Breed Pavilion Examples Aligned with Expo 2031 Programming

Here are selected exemplar pavilions at Osaka that align strongly with the themes we’ll deploy at Expo 2031 (horticulture, architecture/landscape, infrastructure/programming). Each offers some inspiration for our International Horticultural Exhibition.

USA Pavilion

• Built with a triangular-volume + central “Cube of Imagination,” timber louvers, polycarbonate cladding, designed for reuse & modularity. (Spoiler alert: the Cube is a Rocket Launch experience at the end of your Pavilion visit)

• Why: With a national message focus, the USA Pavilion provides strong cues on how to merge structure, storytelling and visitor experience — applicable when Minnesota frames its horticultural expo as an international exchange.

Healthcare Pavilion 

• Featuring Immersive architecture with living walls, biophilic lighting, and real-time health innovation demos that incorporate the visitor's person and health information. (Spoiler alert- before you leave the pavilion your image has been aged to a version of you in 2050 and the AI version of you is in a full dance sequence with the other visitors- crisp and smart). Exhibits link environment and wellbeing—air quality, plant therapy, and regenerative design.

• Why it matters for Expo 2031: Our Health & Wellbeing Pavilion can translate these technological experiences into an experiential pavilion where horticulture, medicine, and mental health meet focusing on a future of health and wellbeing, of course featuring global partners in nature-based wellness. Expo 2031's Health and Wellbeing Pavilion is being curated by the Medical Alley Association.

Better Co‑being Pavilion

• In the “Forest of Tranquillity” zone of Expo 2025, this pavilion floats among trees, with slender steel supports and translucent canopies that evoke clouds or branches. Additionally, the use of sounds of nature transport you into the peace of the forest in the middle of a bustling expo environment.

• Why it matters for horticulture/architecture: Demonstrates how built form can embed in landscape rather than dominate it — ideal for a horticultural exhibition where gardens and architecture should feel seamless.

Women’s Pavilion

• A signature pavilion with a rooftop garden celebrating the role of women in shaping the future, featuring interactive exhibits taking visitors on guided individual journey's (multiple paths simultaneously through museum-like experience moments.

• Why it matters for Expo 2031: A direct inspiration for our planned Women’s Pavilion, where horticulture becomes a platform for leadership and innovation—connecting female scientists, growers, architects, and entrepreneurs globally.

Null²

• One of Expo 2025 Osaka's signature pavilions that uses a mirror membrane, voxel-grid structure, robotics and kinetic surfaces to evoke “polishing life” and the connection of virtual + physical. Even the reflective floor is part of the experience... so visitors have to take off their shoes and socks to fully experience this immersive experience that paired previously capture app information from the participants as part of the experience. (Artist/ Designer: Yoichi Ochiai / NOIZ)

• Why it matters: For infrastructure/programming, it signals how digital/physical interactivity can be woven into horticultural spaces — e.g., smart gardens, interactive plant-systems, visitor sensors, immersive narrative zones, and experiential app integration .

Swiss Pavilion 

• Designed by Manuel Herz: the pavilion features four interconnected spheres made of recyclable plastic pillows, lightweight, re-usable, circular-economy-oriented. At the top of the pavilion is Heidi's Cafe restaurant with a one-of-a-kind giant window that rotates to open an immerse you into a birds-eye view of Expo both day and night.

• Why: A strong example of lightweight infrastructure and reusable systems — for Minnesota we can adopt modular greenhouse spheres or plant-halls that can be relocated post-event as research or community greenhouses.

How We Will Translate Into Minnesota’s Horticultural Expo

• Zones & Visitor Journey: We’ll create three major horticultural zones (mirroring the saving/empowering/connecting themes), each anchored by our climate-centric pavilion + garden + infrastructure hubs:

  • Expo 2031 Climate-aligned zones- Arid, Tropical, Temperate, Continental, and North Star

  Featuring experiences including:

  • Life-Saving Gardens: biodiversity, endangered plants, climate-resilient crops.

  • Life-Empowering Gardens: urban agriculture, food forests, community horticulture labs.

  • Life-Connecting Gardens: cross-cultural gardens, exchange pavilions from partner nations, global seed-banks.

• Built environment: Horticultural pavilions designed with timber, modular construction, reuse-mindset, embedded within landscapes — inspired by the timber-ring and pavilion designs at Osaka.

• Infrastructure and services: Smart irrigation, living roofs, shade-structures, demonstration farms, integrated visitor flow via a “ring-walk” system (much like Osaka’s Grand Ring).

• Programming: Daily forums, living-labs, horticultural workshops, international pavilion contributions, youth gardens, “seed-to-table” experiences.

• Legacy planning: All exhibitions, structures and gardens will be designed for repurposing post-event — botanical garden annexes, community greenhouses, research institutes.

Why This Matters for Expo 2031 USA and Minnesota

By learning from the design sophistication, horticultural integration and infrastructure foresight showcased in Osaka, we can position Expo 2031 to be more than a temporary show: we aim for a lasting horticultural legacy in Minnesota.

Our Design Delegation’s insights ensure that we don’t simply replicate exhibition-form, but evolve it — turning gardens into places of research, architecture into living habitats, and infrastructure into narrative devices.

We look forward to sharing more detailed frameworks, planning documents, and case-studies from Osaka as this delegation contributes to our upcoming Design Delegation eBook..

Thank you for joining us on this journey – and stay tuned for the next update from Minnesota as we translate these global lessons into our home-soil horticultural legacy.

— Wendy Meadley, CEO, Expo 2031 USA