世博会德国馆简介--和谐都市（英文）

Largest EXPO ever, biggest German Pavilion

In China, Germany presents “balancity”, a city in balance

“The world exhibition entertains millions. But beyond entertainment it also gives each and every exhibitor a great opportunity to present its country’s particular expertise. The strengths of the Federal Republic of Germany as an economic nation, as a leader in innovation and last but not least as an attractive place to visit.” Commissioner General Dietmar Schmitz from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology spoke to the media in Beijing about Germany’s participation in the world exhibition in Shanghai a month before it is scheduled to begin. The exhibition will run from 1 May until the end of October 2010 and around 70 million visitors are expected. Schmitz continued by saying that this makes EXPO 2010 “the largest world exhibition ever. And the German Pavilion is also the biggest our country has ever had at an EXPO.” The motto of this year’s world exhibition is “Better City, Better Life”. It will address the urban challenges facing us in the 21st century, challenges that are particularly relevant to China, the country with the highest number of cities in the world with populations of over a million. The German Pavilion is presenting “balancity”, a city in balance, with ideas and solutions made in Germany and created in Germany that can have a positive impact on this development.

Speaking at the joint presentation of the Pavilion, Dirk van der Coelen, Managing Director of Koelnmesse International GmbH said that the on-the-spot team that has been working on preparing the Pavilion brings with it a wealth of EXPO experience. Koelnmesse places a major focus on China in its international business activities and the company gained its first experience in organising Germany’s participation in world exhibitions as far back as 1986 in Vancouver. Further exhibitions followed, the most recent being in Japan in 2005, where the German Pavilion won the “Golden Award” from the event’s hosts. “This experience is what we want to draw upon now”, said van der Coelen. His company, a subsidiary of the Koelnmesse Group, manages the international business of the trade fair company and has a sales network in more than 80 countries, including subsidiaries in Beijing and Hong Kong as well as offices in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

45,000 visitors a day to balancity

In terms of area, participant numbers and visitors, the EXPO in Shanghai is expected to clearly top the highest numbers achieved at the previous great world exhibitions in Seville, Hanover and Aichi. The EXPO will cover a space of 5.3 square kilometres right in the city centre in a former industrial area on both banks of the Huangpu river, 3.3 square kilometres of which are exhibition space. A total of 242 countries and international organisations have registered. The German Pavilion is strategically located very close to the Lupo bridge and right next to European neighbours such as France, Poland and Switzerland. Up to 45,000 people can visit balancity each day; that’s a total of more than 8 million during the course of the EXPO, or about every tenth visitor. A team of some 450 staff will be there to look after the visitors, including a core team of ten employees from Koelnmesse International. In addition, there are over 250 hostesses and hosts and almost 200 people working in the German restaurant, which will be making sure it fulfils Asian expectations of Germany and German cuisine by offering fish dishes from the North, Sauerbraten from the Rhine region, Nuremberg sausages and Bavarian pork knuckles.

balancity – a city in balance

Creative Director Peter Redlin from Milla & Partner put balancity’s message into words: “A city is an attractive place to live in if it has struck a balance between renewal and conservation, innovation and tradition, city and nature, community and individual, work and leisure.” Visitors can experience what this means in full on an adventure-filled tour through typical urban spaces. To get to the entrance, visitors walk across a terraced landscape. They pass through a tunnel to reach a harbour. The path then leads them through a planning office, a garden and a park, to a factory, across the city square, until they arrive at the Energy Source, the city’s power station. In all of these spaces, innovative processes, ideas and products from Germany are presented, which help to enhance life in the city. As in a real city, visitors move through the spaces both actively and passively: partly on foot, partly on moving walkways. The visitors will be accompanied by travel companions Jens and Yanyan, who function as ambassadors between the cultures and initially appear as virtual figures. At the Energy Source at the end of the tour, they appear live and encourage 600 people to use the power of their voices alone to get an almost one-and-a-half tonne sphere decorated with 400,000 LEDs to start swinging. During this seven-minute show, the ball develops a breathtaking momentum. The picture landscapes on the huge pendulum communicate the image of a city in which both renewal and conservation are important. Designed specifically for the German Pavilion at EXPO 2010, the high degree of complexity of this structure is belied by its playful, lighthearted air – an impressive demonstration of state-of-the-art German technology in balancity.