This room reflects on how Expo ‘92 provided a context to consolidate so-called bioclimatic architecture, which replicated natural climate processes in search of comfortable conditions. It also highlights how the constructions from that event, many of them ephemeral, foreshadowed current theories on the relationship between the climate crisis and the mass extraction of resources in the Americas, a process Expo extolled indirectly and which today is considered essential to understanding climate change. This was brought to light in 1992 by the platform Desenmascaremos el 92 (Let’s Unmask ‘92), while other collectives within environmental activism damned the devastating effects, on a local level, of projects such as the high-speed train route linking Madrid and Seville. Nonetheless, in official discourse the priority was mitigating the effects of Seville’s midsummer heat for future Expo visitors.

These tensions are all visible in the urban planning and climate conditioning projects presented to re-order the La Cartuja island, many of which drew upon colonial imagery: pre-Columbian-inspired architecture alongside great masses of water akin to the Atlantic Ocean. Cooling systems in open spaces, such as pergolas, water micronizers and cooling towers were also joined by the landscape gardening of the site, using plants that originated from different countries in the Americas; an operation evoking the colonial extraction of resources. The relationship between heat and underdevelopment was also highlighted by pavilions such as the Chile Pavilion, which sought to dissociate itself from belonging to the geopolitical South by exhibiting an iceberg transported to Seville for the purposes of reflecting it as a “cold and efficient country”.  

As a result, the architecture around Expo ’92 rallied for climate awareness at the same time as it ideologically fed into an ecology crisis and uncovered historical tensions between North and South.

This room reflects on how Expo ‘92 provided a context to consolidate so-called bioclimatic architecture, which replicated natural climate processes in search of comfortable conditions. It also highlights how the constructions from that event, many of them ephemeral, foreshadowed current theories on the relationship between the climate crisis and the mass extraction of resources in the Americas, a process Expo extolled indirectly and which today is considered essential to understanding climate change. This was brought to light in 1992 by the platform Desenmascaremos el 92 (Let’s Unmask ‘92), while other collectives within environmental activism damned the devastating effects, on a local level, of projects such as the high-speed train route linking Madrid and Seville. Nonetheless, in official discourse the priority was mitigating the effects of Seville’s midsummer heat for future Expo visitors.   These tensions are all visible in the urban planning and climate conditioning projects presented to re-order the La Cartuja island, many of which drew upon colonial imagery: pre-Columbian-inspired architecture alongside great masses of water akin to the Atlantic Ocean. Cooling systems in open spaces, such as pergolas, water micronizers and cooling towers were also joined by the landscape gardening of the site, using plants that originated from different countries in the Americas; an operation evoking the colonial extraction of resources. The relationship between heat and underdevelopment was also highlighted by pavilions such as the Chile Pavilion, which sought to dissociate itself from belonging to the geopolitical South by exhibiting an iceberg transported to Seville for the purposes of reflecting it as a “cold and efficient country”.     As a result, the architecture around Expo ’92 rallied for climate awareness at the same time as it ideologically fed into an ecology crisis and uncovered historical tensions between North and South.