A pavilion without borders at World Expo 2025 Osaka

World Expo 2025 Osaka is a once-in-a-lifetime global event, bringing together over 150 countries and regions to share ideas, innovation and identity through architecture and storytelling. When I was invited to join the Australia Pavilion project in early 2023, I knew it would be one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career. The Australian Government, through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), was looking for someone who could bridge cultures with a deep understanding of Australian architecture, but who could also work fluently within the Japanese context. As someone who grew up in Japan and built a career in Australia, this felt like a meaningful intersection of my own journey and values.

My role fundamentally shifted following the outcome of the Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) pathway. Given the scale of construction involved, from critical World Expo infrastructure and buildings to more than 150 participating pavilions, securing a suitable contractor proved to be a significant challenge for the Osaka Expo Taskforce (OETF). Buchan Architects' original concept design was sophisticated and beautiful, but the tender outcome for construction significantly exceeded the project budget. We had to literally return to the drawing board. I collaborated with my client counterpart to develop a master plan for the newly designed pavilion, exchanging ideas back and forth. Within a week, we completed a new pavilion layout, which became the basis for our design and was used at our two-day Design Charrette and subsequent design phases with the OETF and all the design professionals, including Buchan as lead design consultant, their Japanese design sub-consultants Nikken Sekkei, the UK ECI contractor ES Global and project manager Turner & Townsend. We exchanged ideas and accelerated the process to bring the project back within budget while reinforcing the storytelling and functions needed for the Australia Pavilion.

This was not just a redesign, it was a complete rethinking of how to deliver a complex international project in a temporary format, on a highly constrained site, using reused materials and with a fixed construction window. We had to be focused, resourceful, agile and highly collaborative.

The sustainability goals for this project were ambitious but essential. World Expo pavilions are temporary, built for six months then dismantled, so the potential for waste is enormous. From the start, we championed a strategy of circular economy, working closely with UK-based contractor ES Global, who specialise in temporary event structures.

The Pavilion's main structure uses the ES Global Supertruss System, a modular steel framework originally used at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. By reusing this existing system, we achieved an 87% reduction in embodied carbon over the full life cycle compared to manufacturing a new structure locally, even after factoring in transport. The same approach extended to interiors. Furniture was leased through an Australian partner who tags each piece with a QR code, allowing you to track its reuse history. This wasn’t a “nice to have” strategy, it was a core principle. We pushed hard to make reuse and adaptability central to the design and construction approach.

The site itself brought a different kind of challenge. Yumeshima, the man-made island hosting World Expo 2025, is built from incinerated waste ash and soil fill, a highly unstable foundation. You can’t dig too deep or risk piercing the waterproofing layer that prevents environmental contamination.

We couldn’t use traditional footings or piles. Instead, we worked with ES Global to repurpose the truss system not only for the superstructure but also as a floating substructure. We dug a 2.5 metre trench around the building’s perimeter and laid the trusses horizontally to distribute load evenly across the ground. Even then, the site continued to settle, in some places up to 500 millimetres and we had to constantly adjust levels and redesign sections of the pavilion in real time. It was a constantly shifting challenge, but a fascinating one. It demanded innovation and flexibility at every stage.

What made this project truly unique was the makeup of the team. This was an Australian pavilion, on Japanese land, constructed using British systems. We sourced equipment from Dubai, furnishings from Japan and Australia and specialist parts from China. Additionally, it all had to comply with Japanese building codes, some of the strictest in the world, especially in terms of seismic design.

We had two structural engineers, one from the UK, working under British standards and one from Japan. They often had opposing methods and requirements. My role became that of interpreter, not just linguistically, but culturally. I had to make sure that all parties understood not just what was being said, but why, the intent behind decisions, the outcomes we needed and the flexibility each side could offer.

This is where my cultural background made a difference. Having lived and worked in both countries, I understood how to navigate conversations beyond literal translation, how to anticipate misunderstandings and help everyone move forward.

There were so many moments I’ll never forget, from fast-paced design workshops with the global stakeholders, to seeing our modular layout evolve into a fully realised experience, to watching First Nations artists shape the exhibition content with care and meaning.

One of my biggest takeaways is the power of trust. In a project like this, you don’t have the luxury of time. You have to believe in your collaborators, support them and allow them to do what they do best. That mutual trust was critical to getting us over the line and Australia was one of the first pavilions to complete construction ahead of schedule.

For me, this project was more than just a design challenge. It was a personal journey. It brought together my heritage, my profession and my values in a way that doesn’t happen often. I’m proud of the Australia Pavilion not only as a piece of architecture, but as a symbol of what’s possible when people from different places and perspectives come together with a shared vision.

Australia Pavilion Photography: © Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade