Osaka World Expo 2025 - 16 proposals highlighted by METALOCUS

Kengo Kuma was born in Yokohama (Kanagawa, Japan) in 1954. He studied architecture at the University of Tokyo, finishing his degree in 1979. In 1987, he opened the "Spatial Design Studio". In 1990 he founded "Kengo Kuma & Associates" and extended the study to Europe (Paris, France) in 2008. Since 1985 and until 2009, has taught as a visiting professor and holder at the universities of Columbia, Keio, Illinois and Tokyo.

Notable projects include Japan National Stadium (2019), V&A Dundee (2019), Odunpazari Modern Art Museum (2019), and The Suntory Museum of Art (2007).

Kengo Kuma proposes architecture that opens up new relationships between nature, technology, and human beings. His major publications include Zen Shigoto(The complete works, Daiwa S hobo)Ten Sen Men (“point, line, plane”, IwanamiShoten), Makeru Kenchiku (Architecture of Defeat, Iwanami Shoten), Shizen na Kenchiku(Natural Architecture, Iwanami Shinsho), Chii sana Kenchiku (Small Architecture, IwanamiShinsho) and many others.

Main Awards:

· 2011 The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize for "Yusuhara Wooden Bridge Museum."
· 2010 Mainichi Art Award for “Nezu Museum.”
· 2009 "Decoration Officier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" (France).
· 2008 Energy Performance + Architecture Award (France). Bois Magazine International Wood Architecture Award (France).
· 2002 Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award (Finland).
· 2001 Togo Murano Award for “Nakagawa-machi Bato Hiroshige Museum.”
· 1997 Architectural Institute of Japan Award for “Noh Stage in the Forest”. First Place, AIA DuPONT Benedictus Award for “Water/Glass” (USA).

ENORME Studio, founded in Madrid in 2016, is the evolution of three co-founders of PKMN Architectures: Carmelo Rodríguez, Rocío Pina and David Pérez. After collaborating for ten years on more than a hundred projects, they have launched this new shared initiative that maintains the same radical approach to architecture. They design and build architectural projects based on industrial systems and typological innovation.

They specialize in the design of mobile systems applied to housing, workspace, and commerce. They have transformed the traditional concept of living into architecture, creating spaces that are easily transformed through simple gestures. They design and implement participatory dynamics in the field of city construction through their creative services platform CIUDAD CREA CIUDAD and the creation of CITIZEN BRAND IDENTITIES. Their goal is to promote alternative ways of addressing urban issues and motivate the creation of a proactive civic culture. They design and apply "Tactical Urbanism" tools that translate teamwork strategies and collective thinking dynamics into the design and management of public and private spaces. Their goal is to return the city to its citizens as an emotional, plural, and relational space.

Among their most notable projects is their collaboration on the Spanish Pavilion for Expo 2025 Osaka, alongside Néstor Montenegro and Smart and Green Design. Selected through a public competition organized by Acción Cultural Española, their proposal, under the motto "The Kuroshio Current," seeks to connect Spain and Japan through a comprehensive experience that combines architecture, art, design, gastronomy, and outreach, using sustainable and low-impact materials.

Other recent projects include the flexible Beyome home in Madrid, a modular system that allows rooms to be reconfigured according to the needs of the inhabitants, and the installation The Theory of Cherries, a playful and colorful proposal that encourages interaction and reflection on public spaces.

ENORME Studio has been recognized for its innovation and commitment to sustainability, participating in various competitions and receiving mentions in specialized publications. Its interdisciplinary and participatory approach continues to position it as a benchmark in contemporary Spanish architecture.

Fernando Muñoz is an architect from the ETSAM (Spanish Institute of Architecture) in Madrid in 2002 and a Master's degree in Sustainable Construction from Oxford Brookes University in 2014. He is currently a project lecturer on the Interior Design degree program at the IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) in Madrid.

He has developed an analysis and design methodology based on environmental impact reduction, which was selected as a finalist in the 2015 research awards convened by The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He develops protocols for implementing environmental policies in museums and exhibition centers by regulations developed by the international cultural industry, the aim of which is to help governments meet their commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Smart & Green Design is currently focused on the ongoing process of change in the general public's perception of art and culture, designing hybrid "cultural experiences" that combine brand experience with the world of art and culture, designed to appeal to all audiences.

This search for hybrid spaces through the use of technological resources and digital discursive structures has become the hallmark of their projects, leading them to win the competition for the Spanish Pavilion at the Osaka 2025 World Expo. They are also responsible for the "elBulli1846" Museum, a comprehensive museographic project in the heart of Cap de Creus Natural Park, Girona.

Of particular note is the renovation of Seville's iconic Plaza de las Setas, where a "mobile landscape" has been designed to rethink the functions of public space in our cities.

Extudio is an architectural studio based in Madrid, founded and led by Néstor Montenegro. They are a transversal office dedicated to thought, creation and production of Architecture in several fields such as individual and collective housing, commercial and work spaces, public venues and city infrastructures, interior design and ephemeral installations.

Néstor Montenegro (Madrid, 1975) holds a degree in architecture from the ETSAM (National Technical University of Madrid). After 10 years as a partner at dosmasunoarquitectos, in 2013 he founded EXTUDIO, an architectural practice where he develops his professional activity in various fields related to architecture: from design to dissemination, publishing and curating, research, and teaching.

He is the designer of widely awarded and publicised buildings, including: 102 homes in Carabanchel (Ecola Awards and Enor Awards 2009), the Social Services Center in Móstoles (Architecture Plus Award 2012, COAM Award 2012, AIT Award – Architektur Innenarchitecktur Technischer Ausbau Hamburg 2012, Arquia Próxima Award 2012), and the Municipal Library and Theater of Boadilla del Monte (COAM Award 2022, XIV BEAU Award 2023, Matcoam Award 2022), all in Madrid.

The Holy Week Museum in Zamora, the Comprehensive Security Center in Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, and the Spanish Pavilion at the 2025 Osaka World Expo are currently under development as winners of first prizes in competitions.

Shigeru Ban was born in Tokyo in 1957 and after studying architecture in Los Angeles and New York, he opened an architectural practice in Tokyo, in 1985, with offices in Paris and New York, and has designed projects worldwide from private houses to large-scale museums.

His cardboard tube structures have aroused enormous interest. As long ago as 1986, he discovered the benefits of this recyclable and resilient material that is also easy to process. Shigeru Ban built the Japanese pavilion for the Expo 2000 world exposition at Hanover – a structure made of cardboard tubes that measured 75 meters in length and 15 meters in height. All the materials used in the structure were recycled after the exhibition. He developed a genuine style of "emergency architecture" as a response to the population explosion and natural disasters: the foundations of his low-cost houses are made of beer crates filled with sand, and the walls consist of foil-covered cardboard tubes. A house of this sort can be erected in less than seven hours and is considerably more sturdy than a tent.

Shigeru Ban is currently a Professor of Architecture at Keio University and is also a guest lecturer at various other universities across the globe; his works are so exceptional that he was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture in 2005. "Time" magazine describes him as one of the key innovators of the 21st century in the field of architecture and design.

Shigeru Ban has designed projects such as Centre Pompidou Metz and Nine Bridges Golf Clubhouse in Korea. Current projects include new headquarters for Swatch and Omega in Switzerland.

Sou Fujimoto was born in Hokkaido, Japan, on August 4, 1971. He graduated in architecture from the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Engineering in 1994. He established his own architectural practice, Sou Fujimoto Architects, in Tokyo in 2000, and has been a professor at Kyoto University since 2007.

He came to international attention in 2005 when he won the renowned AR – International Architectural Review Awards in the Young Architect category, an award he received three consecutive years, the first in 2006.

In 2008, he won the JIA (Japan Institute of Architects) Award and the World Architecture Festival Award in the Private Houses section. In 2009, Wallpaper magazine awarded him its design award. Sou Fujimoto published "The Primitive Future" in 2008, one of the best-selling architectural books of that year. His architectural projects always seek new forms and spaces between nature and artifice.

Norman Foster is considered by many to be the most prominent architect in Britain. He won the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2009 Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes Prize.

Lord Foster rebuilt the Reichstag as a new German Parliament in Berlin and designed a contemporary Great Court for the British Museum. He linked St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tate Modern with the Millennium Bridge, a steel footbridge across the Thames. He designed the Hearst Corporation Building in Manhattan, at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue.

He was born in Manchester, England, in 1935. Among his firm’s many other projects are London’s City Hall, the Bilbao Metro in Spain, the Canary Wharf Underground Station in London and the renovated courtyard of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

In the 1970s, Lord Foster was one of the most visible practitioners of high-tech architecture that fetishized machine culture. His triumphant 1986 Hong Kong and Shanghai bank building, conceived as a kit-of-parts plugged into a towering steel frame, was capitalism's answer to the populist Pompidou Center in Paris.

Nicolai Ouroussoff, The Times’s architecture critic, has written that although Lord Foster’s work has become sleeker and more predictable in recent years, his forms are always driven by an internal structural logic, and they treat their surroundings with a refreshing bluntness.

Awarded the Prince of Asturias of the Arts 2009.

For more than 110 years since the founding of our company in 1900, they have responded to the demands of society as well as to the diverse requests of their clients, always contributing to the creation of better buildings and social environments. The Nikken Group has been entrusted with approximately 25,000 projects not only in Japan but also in around 40 other countries, covering a wide range of areas including master plans and mixed-use urban development, transportation (airports and train stations), offices, R&D, education and culture, production and logistics, healthcare and welfare, commerce, hotels, and residential complexes.

Urbanization is a process that is progressing very rapidly in today’s world. To address the challenges that arise from it, Nikken Sekkei draws on the knowledge and technologies it has cultivated through its many years of experience and proposes solutions such as the development of smart cities and smart TOD (Transit-Oriented Development).

Nendo is a design office founded by Oki Sato in Tokyo, in 2002, which work spans architecture, interiors, productos and graphics, and has won international design awards.

Oki Sato was born in Canada in 1977 and studied architecture at Waseda University, graduating top of his class in 2000. He earned his master's degree from Waseda in 2002 and founded design studio Nendo that same year.

With multidisciplinary studios in Tokyo and Milan, Oki's work spans a wide range of fields, such as architecture, product design, and branding, and has been recognized internationally with awards on several occasions, including in Italy, France, and the UK where he was named Designer of the Year. His recent major projects include the Tokyo 2020 Olympic cauldron, and he is also involved in the design of the new TGV trains for France's high-speed rail network.

A jury member of iF award, 2010. Lecturer for Waseda University, Tokyo; “Designer of the Year” (Wallpaper* magazine): “Designer of the Year” (ELLE DECO International Design Awards), 2012. “Guest of honor” (Toronto Interior Design Show); “Guest of honor” (Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair), 2013. “Designer of the Year” (Maison & Objet); “Interior Designers of the Year” (Iconic Awards); “CHANGE MAKER OF THE YEAR 2015” (Nikkei Online), 2015. A producer of World Design Capital Taipei; Jury Chair for the Golden Pin Design Award, 2016.