Zōḗ – International Expo 2025 Osaka

At Expo 2025 Osaka, the iconic “Shining Hat” – the impressive centerpiece expected to attract visitors from around the world – becomes the canvas for a visionary projection mapping that reimagines the future of our cities and our relationship with the natural world.

In this future city that unfolds across the unique wall of the Expo Hall, light is not merely an artificial construct, a technological convenience, but a vital force that powers the very fabric of the urban ecosystem. Just as plants rely on photosynthesis to thrive, converting sunlight into the energy that sustains life, the architecture of this city harnesses the sun’s energy to sustain its living, breathing structures.

Here, buildings are no longer inert masses of concrete and steel, but organisms that pulse with life, that respond to the rhythm of day and night, that grow and adapt like the natural systems they emulate. They breathe with the wind, drink the rain, and feed on sunlight – a radical reimagining of what urban spaces can become when we stop fighting against nature and start learning from it.

Light is not just a functional element in this city – it is a vital component of the urban ecology. The dance of light and shadow, the interplay of natural and artificial illumination, creates a dynamic, pulsing environment that mirrors the cycles of the natural world. Dawn brings gradual awakening, noon floods with energy, dusk invites reflection, and night offers rest and regeneration. The city and its inhabitants are in constant, symbiotic exchange with the light that sustains them, a delicate balance that ensures the health and resilience of the entire system.

By placing light at the heart of this eco-centric architectural vision, we envision a future city that is not merely a collection of buildings, but a living, breathing entity – one that harnesses the power of nature to create spaces that are truly in harmony with their inhabitants and the environment. Every surface becomes a membrane for exchange, every structure a participant in the greater ecological conversation.

This is no longer architecture in the traditional sense – it is a new paradigm of coexistence. It is the physical manifestation of a new ecological awareness, where technological progress merges with the ancient wisdom of nature. It is a future where we no longer build cities, but cultivate them, tending to them as gardeners tend their plants, understanding that growth requires patience, care, and respect for natural processes. Where we no longer occupy spaces, but nourish them, recognizing that we are not separate from our environment but integral to it.

In this future, architecture is no longer a refuge from nature, no longer walls that separate us from the wild, but a bridge towards it. It is the realization that true innovation lies not in dominating the environment, mastering it through brute force and clever engineering, but in becoming a harmonious part of it, learning its rhythms, speaking its language, dancing to its ancient songs.

It is the promise of a tomorrow where technology no longer separates us from the natural world, but helps us rediscover our place within it. Where the glass and steel of our cities become living tissues, where our streets flow like rivers, where our buildings breathe like forests. A tomorrow where the boundary between built and grown dissolves, where human creativity and natural wisdom merge into something entirely new.

This projection mapping, displayed on the special stage of the “Shining Hat” during Expo 2025 Osaka, is part of a participatory exhibition program that brings together diverse visions from around the world. It is a message for the future, delivered to visitors from every corner of the globe: that another way is possible, that our cities can become gardens, that light can be life, that we can build a world where technology and nature are not adversaries but partners in the great work of sustaining life on this planet.

Zōḗ – the ancient Greek word for the essence of life itself – invites us to imagine, to dream, to believe in a future where our cities live and breathe with us.