“Six months to go”: The Luxembourg Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka and its interior are taking shape in big steps
In just six months, on April 13, 2025 precisely, the Expo 2025 Osaka, Japan, will open its doors to welcome the world. Luxembourg will present itself under the overarching theme “Doki Doki – The Luxembourg Heartbeat” with a pavilion “designed for disassembly” by the Luxembourgish architectural firm STDM – according to the principles of the circular economy.
The construction as well as the interior design setup of the pavilion are progressing as planned and the production of the scenography, developed by the studio jangled nerves, is slowly entering its final phase.
Over the past few months, the focus of the construction phase has been put on laying the foundations and building the steel structure. In line with circular economy principles, the Luxembourg Pavilion is built on a floating foundation using precast concrete monoblocs, which are fully removable and reusable after the Pavilion’s deconstruction.
Those foundations had been placed in early summer, followed by building the steel construction.
The structure itself is composed of high-performance steel sections manufactured in Japan, assembled in a way to allow for easy dismantling and recovery. The metal profiles used for the floors, external walls, and roofs of the exhibition spaces are designed with standardized lengths to allow for their reuse.
“We are pleased with the good progress being made, step by step, on the construction of the pavilion, as well as its interior design and its scenography”, says André Hansen, Commissioner General. “We are on schedule and will keep developing the event program in the coming weeks.“
Timely with the initiation of the countdown one year before Expo 2025 Osaka this April, a series of calls for applications for the Luxembourg Pavilion had been launched. They partly aimed at individuals interested in working as staff members or volunteers within the Luxembourg Pavilion.
Several calls for applications have been successfully completed, including one in collaboration with FLAC (Luxembourg Federation of Authors and Composers), that targeted towards selecting a Luxembourg-based composer to create the pavilion’s sound identity. The work of Claude Zeimes was ultimately chosen by the jury for the project.
Another objective was to select suitable furniture created by Luxembourgish designers for the VIP area of the pavilion. The furniture showcases high-quality materials and embodies the principles of circularity, with a focus on reuse, recycling, and material sustainability.
Due to the outstanding quality of submissions, the jury decided to select multiple designers or design companies: Julie Conrad Design Studio and BrakoN!ier (Norbert Brakonier), Dante Good and Bads (Christophe de la Fontaine), Geckeler Michels and Georges Zigrand.
