Expo '58
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Expo 58, also known as the Brussels World’s Fair, Brusselse Wereldtentoonstelling or Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles, was held from 17 April to 19 October 1958[1]. It was the first major World's Fair after World War II.
Nearly 15,000 workers spent three years building the 2 km² site, found on the Heysel plateau, seven kilometres northwest of Brussels, Belgium. Many of the buildings were re-used from the Brussels International Exposition (1935). The site is best known for a giant model of a unit cell of an iron crystal (each sphere representing an atom), called the Atomium, which decades later remains one of the best known landmarks of Brussels.
More than 42 million visitors visited the site, which was opened with a call for world peace and social and economic progress, issued by King Baudouin I.
The fair is known for a musical milestone, a melding of musical composition and architecture. Edgard Varèse composed "Poème électronique," which was recorded to be played back from 425 loudspeakers, placed at specific points in the Philips Pavilion, designed by Iannis Xenakis while under the employ of Le Corbusier.
The fair is also remembered for being the place where Orson Welles's Touch of Evil was awarded the top prize by then-critics Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, despite Universal Studios' domestic dumping as a B-picture.
See also
References
- ^ "When the world was in Brussels". Flanders Today (April 16, 2008).
External links
- Brussels World's Fair approaches completion, a March 17, 1958 Universal newsreel clip from the Internet Archive
- Expo '58 and a Flash-based interactive map from the Atomium website
- brussels-expo58.be - Celebrating 50 years of Expo 58 in 2008
- Audiovisual archives about Expo 58.
| Preceded by Port-au-Prince International |
World Expositions 1958 |
Succeeded by Century 21 Exposition |
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