At Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, the closed buildings of Oritachi Junior High School, Totsukawa Village, Nara Prefecture, and the Nakade Branch of Hosomi Elementary School, Fukuchiyama City, Kyoto Prefecture, will be used for the Signature Pavilion “to exist” (its theme: Embracing Lives) directed by KAWASE Naomi, Thematic Project Producer for Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan.
On October 14, 2023, in the schoolyard of the Nakade Branch of Hosomi Elementary School, Fukuchiyama City, Kyoto Prefecture—one of the closed buildings—a construction safety prayer ceremony was held, hosted by Muramoto Corporation.
The Signature Pavilion “to exist” is a pavilion that aims to understand and overcome mutual differences in race, religion, culture, etc. through dialogue. The school building of the Nakade Branch of Hosomi Elementary School, Fukuchiyama City, will be reconstructed at the Expo site Yumeshima as a “Dialogue Theater” where Expo visitors can connect and interact with people from around the world.
From around January 2024 onwards, construction at the Expo site, Yumeshima, is scheduled to begin.
※ On July 2, 2023, a construction safety prayer ceremony for Oritachi Junior High School, Totsukawa Village, Nara Prefecture, was held in the schoolyard of Oritachi Junior High School, hosted by Muramoto Corporation.
This school building will serve as the main theater where the pavilion’s main content, “Dialogue Theater,” will be presented during the Expo. The dialogue will be conducted by people of different nationalities, races, and cultures who are completely unknown to each other, and it will be a place where “A dialogue for the first time in human history is born every day”.
“The two school buildings were beautiful architectural structures with a sense of nostalgia that had been shared by people over the ages since the early Showa period (1926~1945). Even though it was my first visit, I felt a sense of nostalgia, as if I had known this place for a long time.
For the Kawase Pavilion, former school buildings in Totsukawa Village, Yoshino-gun, Nara Prefecture will also be used, but instead of combining them with other school buildings, each will be modified to suit the purpose of the pavilion and be reborn as a building with new value. The ginkgo trees planted alongside the school building, which had grown together with the children who studied here, will be brought to the Expo site to sustain their lives.
Public Relations Department, Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition
E-mail: media@expo2025.or.jp