Judy Rubin writes...I never met the late Ted Allan, but I corresponded with him and worked with him for years. From 1987-1995, I was associate editor of World’s Fair magazine and he was a regular columnist. Mr. Allan was a natural and prolific writer and his submissions were always entertaining and sharply observant. After I left World’s Fair, I invited him to contribute to various publications I edited and he would always oblige with a fascinating article whenever he was asked.

Ted Allan worked on his first world expo project as an architect in 1951 and subsequently became involved in the exhibition and trade fair business nonstop, including all the major expos worldwide. He was British Commissioner General at Vancouver Expo 86, President of the Executive Commission at the BIE in Paris from 1986-1992 and BIE President 1992-1993. In ‘retirement,’ he wrote and broadcast on the subject, and continued as an advisor on expo projects.

In this article, presented just as originally published in 2000 in a quarterly magazine that I edited for TEA - only the websites have been updated - Ted Allan comments, in his unique and delightful, world-witty diplomat’s voice, on what were then two of London’s newest landmarks: the London Eye and the Millennium Dome. He follows it with a summary of world expo doings at the time (note: Shanghai landed the 2010 expo, www.shanghai-expo.com). There’s enough name-dropping and historical context here to make the reader feel like a political insider, and all the observations are still fresh and relevant today. I wish Ted Allan was here today to comment on that and a few other things. He was what I’d call a great human being.

Many thanks to TEA for giving permission to republish this article, and to Blooloop for enthusiastically taking it on. By doing so, they allow more people to appreciate Ted Allan.


The Eye, the Dome, and the Expo: A Long (and Sometimes Cold) Look at International Events and Attractions Abroad   By Ted Allan.
London Gets the Eye

Great, British Airways has just re-invented the Wheel. Given the problems that BA shares with most of the world’s airlines, it might be said that they should have had other things on their minds. But this could be a winner. Backing away from over-generous sponsorship of the Millennium Dome further down the River Thames (which shows a certain shrewdness of mind) they went for building and operating the biggest Ferris wheel in the world. Smack opposite Big Ben in the heart of London, it is a marketing device not to be missed. And now that some early technical trouble has been cured (which embarrassingly delayed the grand Millennium opening scheduled for Jan. 1) it is pulling in the crowds, and making a profit into the bargain.

The London Eye is 443 feet high, so it dominates the somewhat staid, traditional architecture of the heart of London in a way that made purists unhappy that permission was ever given to erect this giant bicycle wheel. But it is big, bold and beautiful – and from its thirty-two capsules a breathtaking view twenty-five miles around puts it high on the tourist agenda. At $10 for a thirty-minute ride, it beats Concorde. Architects David Marks and Julia Barfield (who won the competition to bridge the Grand Canyon in 1989) have done a stylish job, and Dutch fabricators Hollandia’s steel structure (which took a breathtaking week to raise to the vertical position from lying flat across the Thames) supports the capsules provided by French conveyance specialists POMA. The planned 2.2 million passengers a year should make this a highly profitable venture, and getting a ticket is proving to be as taxing as finding a seat for your favorite London theater. Try www. londoneye.com.

Sadly, none of the London Eye promotional material paid tribute to G.W.G. Ferris of Pittsburgh, who conceived the first Ferris Wheel. The promo fluff offers some pretty boring statistics, such as the fact that 3.5 miles of cables support the rim of the wheel. It does concede that others exist – “90 feet taller than the previous highest wheel, at Yokoyama Bay, in Japan” and “twice the height of Prater wheel, in Vienna” – although it neglects to mention that the latter has been rotating for nigh on 100 years, which makes it the oldest in the world, nor that the Prater wheel achieved film stardom in the 1950s thriller The Third Man when Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles had a memorable dialogue about the ethics of war.

For the record, G.W.G. Ferris conceived, constructed and funded the first Ferris wheel for the World’s Columbian Exhibition: the 1893 Chicago world’s fair. He also pocketed a tidy profit; with 36 cars capable of holding up to 40 passengers each, the 250-foot diameter Wheel had a capacity of 1,440 people per ride, at 50 cents turn. The Ferris wheel was the answer to the search for a feature to rival the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the London Eye may be bigger, but the thrill is the same. I’ve always been impressed by the ability and courage of showmen of that era to get their ideas off the ground with the minimum of red tape or technology; usually, it seems, on the basis of sketches done on the backs of envelopes or café menus. Take Joseph Paxton, who designed and oversaw the construction of the first iron and glass modular, demountable building in the world, in less than a year for the first world’s fair, London’s 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition (which has its 150th anniversary next year). No computers, but then no federal safety inspectors snooping around the joint, either. Like Paxton, G.W.G. Ferris had guts and vision. Come on, British Airways – it may be the London Eye to you, but for those of us in the business, it’s still a Ferris wheel.

As for the Eiffel Tower, which since 1889 has become a symbol not only of Paris but of France, and a monument to intrepid engineering everywhere, it featured as the centerpiece of the city’s millennium madness and easily won the accolade for the biggest, noisiest and most colorful of all the fireworks fantasies of New Year’s 2000.

City of the Domed

One building you will not see from the London Eye is the controversial Millennium Dome. Although only a few miles downriver, it is (conveniently, say the critics) positioned behind the slab of an apartment block. Now, let me be the first to acknowledge that there is much that is good about the dome, which you may correctly assess as damnation by faint praise. Like the famous curate’s egg, it is good in parts. What offends me is that this grandiose project seems to have, firstly, no clear purpose, and secondly, that in arriving at the finished result the organizers seem to have shrugged off or ignored all the accumulated experience and knowledge of the international theme park industry. Since it will have gobbled up what is effectively around $700 million US in public money (and another $225 million in sponsorship) it is not unreasonable to take a long, cold look at how this came about.

The 1851 Great Exhibition was a lively fanfare for a new industrial revolution. The 1951 Festival of Britain was intended as a morale booster for a tired, war-weary nation. But the Dome, which is neither Expo nor festival nor theme park, neither a fun outing nor a fascinating museum experience, seems in some ways to have achieved the worst, not the best of all these. As the London Observer said on 30 January, “The Dome, built to re-energize the nation, raise the self-esteem of its people and enhance the nation’s standing, is a flop.” The Daily Telegraph was even more specific, with the headline “Dump the Dome.”

Funded mainly by proceeds from Britain’s National Lottery (run effectively by the American company Camelot) the profits from which, to be fair, have also effectively been directed at a number of worthwhile public projects nationwide, the Dome is the outcome of political miscalculation in which decision making has been largely in the hands of a myriad of committees and working parties of the great and the good, none of whom seem to have been able or willing to draw on international experience. Worse, when a government Minister paid a visit to Florida, he went out of his way to pour cold water on the notion that Disney might have something to offer in the way of example or expertise. The Dome, it seemed, was above all that – and yet there was no clear indication of what it aimed to be. Which made for a certain eating of humble pie (not by the politician in question, since the breed seems incapable of admitting error) when, after a month of operation, the private-sector sponsors that had been coerced into putting money up front - others were made of sterner stuff – screamed for change at the top in light of the adverse comments of early visitors. In a rare moment of decisive action, the management company promptly fired the CEO, and brought in – wait for it – Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, operating director at Disneyland Paris, “to put in place a hit squad of experienced operational management… to convert [it] into a world-class tourist attraction.”

How are the mighty fallen – and yet the change had all the characteristics of a knee-jerk panic reaction rather than a piece of sound management. Any experienced theme park operator could have told the company that the attendance figures in January, in an unheated tent, are likely to be depressed, and that the way to deal with line-ups is to entertain them. It may even be that the outgoing CEO knew this. If so, I’m sorry for Jenny Page. Arrogant she may have been, but stupid not. Given the complexities of the project, and heavy handed interference, she at least got the Dome open on schedule. I hope she’s lying on a beach somewhere, letting it all wash out of her system.

 Curiously, before M. Gerbeau had time to hang up his hat, the attendance improved, inspired, it is said, by the headline news in the media and TV and a public driven by curiosity to see this white elephant for themselves, thus proving the adage about any publicity being good publicity. With warmer weather, and the all-important school vacations which experienced operators mark in red on their schedules, attendance is improving.  But not enough, it seems. M. Gerbeau’s action plan is predictable. Having reduced the expected attendance figure from 12 million to 7 million, he has twice gone cap in hand for injections of yet more lottery funding – around $75 million to date. Ticket prices have been reduced, as have staffing levels, and some pretty tacky extra attractions thrown at the project, of which ‘Miss World’ heads the list. The closing date in December must seem a long way off as he juggles the ingredients in this recipe for disaster.

If I am ever invited to advise on a practical MBA course for the theme park industry (which, given its growing importance in the world economic spectrum, as the UN acknowledges, might be timely) the London Dome story would be required case history reading.

 A product of the fertile imagination of the Richard Rogers Architecture partnership, it covers twenty acres – and the sheer size of this structure stops visitors in their tracks. From twelve peripheral masts is suspended a canopy of chemically-coated fiberglass fabric (by Chemfab of New Hampshire) which was installed by Birdair (Buffalo, New York) – the 100,000 square meters making the largest roof in the world. Great. It looks, and is, a fine piece of engineering. The trouble is, no one has yet worked out what to do with it when the exhibits are pulled out at the end of the year – a piece of fundamental planning that seems to have been overlooked. So if you are in the market for the biggest unheated tent in the world, it’s up for grabs. Had Disney not decided that its next major venture will be in Hong Kong, it might have suited. The low height of the outside rim of the Dome rules out much in the way of banked seating, by the way. But hopefully, someone with an eye to a prime London site, with new (and expensive) London Underground extension laid on, will have a brainwave. I wish them luck.

The Dome problems really start with the interior, the center of which makes use of the full height of the structure to provide a setting for an ambitious aerial ballet with an international cast of 162 performers. The creative team that put this together under the directorship of Mark Fisher sounds like a who’s who of contemporary theater, and the result is impressive. Less so are the 14 theme zones which occupy the perimeter of the tent, and which must stand the test of being the raison d’être of the whole expensive exercise. With titles like Body, Work, Learning, Mind, Play, Money and Faith, each of these 14 zones is said to have been designed by Britain’s best talents. Those who survived the course were certainly tough, since the demands of the myriad committees and sponsors led to conflicts of interest. Design teams came and went with alarming rapidity, and some of those who fell by the wayside made their anger and disbelief known to an increasingly attentive media.

What finally emerged is a curious mish-mash of techniques and images, some of which are pretty good, and others – frankly – unworthy of the high objectives the organizers claim to have motivated the project. The most popular zone – with a one-and-a-half-hour waiting time – is the Body Zone, sponsored by Boots, a major pharmacy company. Housed in a massive sculpture of the human body (entry through the elbow, in case you wondered) and dominated by a huge, pneumatic beating heart, it tells you all the things you knew and didn’t want to be reminded of about unhealthy living. The rope-size pubic hair is a wow with visitors  - but I was left wondering why an audience satiated with nightly TV orgies of intimate surgery found it all so fascinating. Maybe the medium has something going for it, after all.

The Journey Zone, sponsored by Ford, is a competent display any museum would be proud of, but is a pale shadow of pavilions created by the automotive industry for past world’s fairs, such as those of Ford and GM at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. Given the overall cost of these displays, where did the money go? I was left longing for a super giant-screen film, or for that matter anything else that really was bigger, better, wider or higher in terms of sheer imagination, despite the spin doctor’s repeated claims in the press kit. The closest to a real fun experience for the kids is the Play Zone, designed by Land Design Studio, in which the welcome sound of real laughter fills the space where rapid-fire blasters shoot plastic balls at human targets.

Nowhere is it more obvious that a camel is a horse designed by a committee than in the Faith Zone, which must have driven Czech-born architect Eva Jiricna to tears as design after design bit the dust under the scrutiny of an ever extending multifaith committee, from Buddhist to Zoroastrian, determined, it seems, not to cause offense to anyone in getting the message of this Christian millennium across. In the end, she settled for a dignified and symbolic spatial exercise in which light and abstract image convey a spiritual quality.

Leaving the Dome, I pondered on what my $30 day pass had given me in the way of a lasting memory, and remained puzzled and dissatisfied about what the intentions of this great money-guzzling enterprise really were. But then, as an old Expo hand, maybe I’m too cynical. I felt the lack of real professional expertise in putting this act together. Certainly, there was a demonstrable lack of a single, controlling, creative leader – a design supremo – who might have brought all this disparate image-making together more effectively. Being a thrifty Scot, I hate seeing good money wasted. But maybe the thousands of chattering school kids having a great day out saw more than I had done. Stand by for a trumpet blast from the politicians about what a great achievement this will have been. But please, please, don’t ever do it again…

The Dome website is at www.millennium-dome.com.

US Participation Withers at Hanover Expo 2000

Nowhere are the problems of the London Dome being studied more closely than in Germany, where on June 1 the Hanover Universal Expo 2000 was opened by German Chancellor Gerard Schroder with the by-now familiar exhortations to work together for the cause of international understanding. The rock bands made an impressive sound, too. Media comment was unenthusiastic, throwing doubt on the ability of this mammoth project (an official blurb points out the site is the size of the state of Monaco) to achieve the target of 41 million visitors in five months. Attendance has, in fact, been sluggish: with Gerbeau-like predictability, ticket prices have been reduced, staff laid off, site attractions boosted. But the organizers are still grimly sticking to their attendance predictions, possibly because the financial shortfall that might otherwise be presented to the German taxpayer is of frightening scale. Expo Commissioner General Birgit Breuel is a shrewd and tough fighter. She could be right, but I have my doubts.

 As the official world exhibition, registered by the Paris-based International Exhibitions Bureau (BIE) back in 1991, a certain amount of schadenfreude is understandable since British Prime Minister Tony Blair pronounced that the London Dome would be the biggest tourist attraction in Europe this year. As Hanover has been quick to reply, with 174 nations and 18 international organizations contributing around $500 million for their exhibits, Expo 2000 is a different ball game. And with Teutonic efficiency, the massive Hanover trade fair has been transformed to host the Expo.

It may well be that international enthusiasm for the reunification of Germany was a powerful incentive in swinging the vote in favor of Hanover, and against a thoroughly professional bid by Toronto. It may also be that with hindsight, the renewed German capital of Berlin would have been a wiser location than this north German city of 800,000 souls. Be that as it may, the Hanover team have assembled a powerful program – try www.expo2000.de for a good Internet tour. The thematic area Humankind does try to throw some light on world environmental issues – as do the various Expo inspired projects in many parts of the world.

But all is not sweetness and light. As the Expo Deputy Commissioner General Norbert Bartmann said in his address to the winter BIE conference in Paris, “Unfortunately, the United States of America have withdrawn their decision to construct a pavilion. The problem - as you may have gathered – is a lack of funding. Together with US Commissioner General William Rollnick and US Ambassador Kornblum, we are working on a solution. It is still feasible for the US to construct a pavilion, but this would certainly have to be a modified construction. Another alternative would be a presentation in one of the existing exhibition halls.”

Diplomatically expressed, but dynamite. Since the US Commission on Public Diplomacy, reviewing the work of the US Information Agency in 1992 (the USIA oversees US participation in expos abroad) visited the last Universal Expo in Seville in 1992, there has been a virtual prohibition on the use of Federal funding for the US involvement in Expos. But this did no more than set the official seal of disapproval on a medium difficult to justify in cost/benefit terms, for which the US had significantly reduced its budgets since 1986. Subsequent private sector funded pavilions, as at Taejon, Korea in 1993, or Lisbon in 1998, have frankly not been of a standard to which the Expo world had been accustomed in the heady days when the USIA was taking on the forces of Communism. Indeed, no presence at all might be preferable, for all that the private sector teams struggled mightily to fly the Stars and Stripes. And that is what transpired. In April, they threw in the towel, and the US involvement in Expo 2000 was counted out. Germany put a brave face on it, but the embarrassment was huge. Although the Los Alamos-style secrecy surrounding the agonizing debate going on between Berlin and Washington over the months was played down (it included a German plea for Henry Kissinger to mediate) the final crunch was painful not only to the US and Germany, but to the BIE, as media reports dug into the awful suspicion that, perhaps, world’s fairs are an anachronism in the new millennium, and the US is only putting into practice doubts that others are now starting to voice.

It deserves attention that first, the US government and then, the rich world of US industry, have come to see these events as a poor investment. I believe these events have a role to play in international relations, but I accept that it might be time for us to look more closely at what it might be. Much as I would regret the unthinkable of Hanover 2000 being deprived of the presence of the most powerful nation on earth, I would rather the US stayed away than settled for a third-rate presence based on a begging bowl procession round US industry. And the unthinkable might prod that august diplomatic body in Paris to take a long, cold look at its role.

Funding these projects is not only a problem for the US. The Italian parliament endlessly debated a budget for its pavilion. Other nations deferred starting construction of exhibits, due in part to a startling collapse of confidence among private-sector sponsors worldwide. To do them justice, German industries from Siemens to Volkswagen have rallied round. Whether they will continue to do so to support a German Pavilion in, say, Aichi Expo 2005 in Japan, may be  another matter. National pavilions are dramatically reduced in scale at Hanover as compared to Seville Expo 92 – in the case of many, by around 75%. Among the big spenders are the Netherlands, with a much-admired tiered structure towering over its neighbors. And Japan – with 2005 in mind – has contributed an imaginative building in keeping with the theme, fabricated from recycled cardboard tubes. So the record number of participants attracted to Germany may not add up to as attractive a site experience for the visitors – and 41 million is an ambitious target in five months. Time – and media comment, as always – will tell. Make no mistake, this magnum opus is an achievement for Germany. There is much to admire. The problem lies elsewhere, and getting to grips with the future of world expositions is becoming a pressing need.

Planned and Proposed World’s Fairs, 2005 and Beyond

As the Germans watch London, so the Japanese anxiously watch Hanover – not least because the possible withholding of US support for Aichi Expo 2005 is even more unthinkable to a nation which still looks to the US for leadership. Further, the Japanese organizers, who have been hard at work for five years on their master plan, have been hit hard by environmentalist reaction to the allocation of 40 hectares of the Kaisho Forest area for the Expo, and the Japanese cabinet is now considering alternatives based on 2,400 pages (!) of environmental impact studies, which must have used a lot of trees for the paper generated. It may be to Japan’s credit, as a democracy, that the final nail in the coffin of the original plan was the identification of a nesting pair of Goshawks (Accipiter gentilis, to you birdwatchers) smack in the middle of the site. Given that the theme of the Expo is ‘Nature’s Wisdom,’ there were red faces all round. All right, it’s funny in a way – but there is much nail-biting going on round the drawing boards in Nagoya. Japan has a fine record for mounting international expositions, from Osaka Expo 70 onwards, and its expertise is unchallenged. Nonetheless, the BIE has warned that too sweeping a change in the format of the event approved by that organization may require a second enquiry mission, and further debate in Paris. Japanese media are delighted to let this story run and run, and the background of a troubled economy (and Tokyo’s cancelled World City Expo of 1996) does not help.

I wish them luck. With four years still to run, anything can happen in this troubled world. Visit www.expo2005.com.

The BIE in Paris, meanwhile, is gearing up for yet another round of diplomatic lobbying from those nations bidding for the next expos, in 2007 and 2010. There is a growing feeling that the extended time scale required for this process (nine years in advance for large events) is too long. Given that in 1851 London put together the Great Exhibition in two years, why do we now need nine? And since many exhibitions collapse in the planning stage – the Philippines for 2002, Budapest for 1996, Philadelphia for 1976, to name but three – the cancellations deprive other worthy candidates. Another curious wrinkle is that a theme which seemed important at the beginning of the process may be nonsense by the time the event happens – of which the Knoxville Energy Expo in 1982 is a salutary example. When conceived, the so-called energy crisis was bringing a lineup of automobiles to gas stations in the US, begging for a gallon of the essential fluid. But by 1982, the big oil companies were back in gear, and it was almost unpatriotic not to be driving a gas-guzzling car. Expo 82 was a farce, and the energy theme a non-sequitur.

For the slot in 2007, a three-month-long expo, there is one candidate so far: Greece, which wants to utilize the facilities created for its 2004 Olympics in Athens. But there is a candidate waiting in the wings, to the embarrassment of Washington, D.C. Atlanta, according to that city’s Business Chronicle, is about to throw its hat into the ring. Given the fact that Atlanta and Athens battled it out with the International Olympic Committee for the 1996 Summer Games, the opening of old wounds with Greece could make for an interesting contest. But the real struggle will be in Washington – will the US back an American city in such a confrontation?

The 2010 competition is more complex. OK, here’s a game for you: Given that you are in the appropriate driver’s seat in Washington, which of the following do you advise your government to adopt?

1.    Say that the US government has no confidence in the future of world’s fairs, and withdraw from the BIE.

2.    Tell the member states of the BIE that before the US delegation is prepared to make a decision, or cast a vote, it requires the organization to institute a fundamental review of the role of world expositions I the next century: and that the US, in furtherance of this objective, will host a diplomatic conference (to which expert advisors, such as members of the theme park industry, might give evidence) in order to establish a new regime.

3.    Vote for Buenos Aires. An OAS nation (Organization of American States,) Argentina is the first South American country to seek to host a BIE-sanctioned exposition. The strategic arguments are self-evident – and Argentina would be mightily displeased if her neighbors to the north turned against her. (If Buenos Aires succeeds, a US pavilion of significance is a must.)

4.    Vote for China. Shanghai sent a powerful delegation to the winter BIE conference, and has already made it known that China has the serious intention of competing for 2010. Given the growing economic significance of the PRC, the bid must be taken seriously – not least by the US, which seeks to encourage the opening up of free enterprise trade with the last major Socialist bastion in the East. Kunming, in Yunan province, made a stab at the lowest category of BIE event in 1999, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Long March. The resulting Garden Exhibition – for all that the plastic souvenirs looked as though made from milk, and the print and promotion were colorful more than accurate – was a brave effort. Ninety-five nations came along to add their support, the US being an exception, although a number of cities and states got together to fly the flag around the Texas theme – so the catalog says – of ‘The West – Hometown of American Cowboys.” But the Exhibition, visited by over nine million visitors, was a success. As a guinea pig project for 2010, it showed that China has the capacity to put on a major event.

5.    Vote for Korea. After Taejon Expo 93, the Koreans put together a serious working party to review a bid for 2010. This has now produced an efficient plan to host the world in Yeosu City, Korea’s third largest port in the southwest of the country. On the theme of ‘The Oceans,’ a master plan is now being lobbied around the world, offering, it is aid, significant advantages in economic terms over the rival candidates. The lobbying which preceded 1993 was tough and prolonged, and the Koreans showed themselves to be tough negotiators. US support is confidently predicted…

Right. You are about to put your considered views to the State Department. Which way do you jump? For myself, I’d go for option 2. But the US Embassy in Buenos Aires has just sent a tough signal, and the Department of Commerce looks likely to go for China. Or does Korea offer an easy way out? Come on, have the courage of your convictions….

Images:  1.Ron Mueck's Boy (2000), fibreglass, resin, silicone - a 5 metre tall sculpture of a boy, crouching. First shown in the UK Millennium Dome exhibition. It is now owned by the art museum ARoS in the city of Aarhus, Denmark.
2. A proposed structure in China, the REN Building. Copenhagen’s Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) proposed this eye-catching design  to coincide with Shanghai’s “Better City, Better Life” 2010 World Expo.
Many thanks to Judy Rubin and the TEA.