Playground of Life: Jellyfish Pavilion, EXPO 2025 Signature Pavilion

Creativity Born from Fluctuation

The jellyfish is a symbol of fluctuation.
No life is ever complete, nor does it exist in stillness. All living beings dwell within constantly shifting environments. From these subtle instabilities arise moments of awareness, questions yet unnamed—and it is there that creativity is released.

The Playground of Life – Jellyfish Pavilion sits atop a gentle hill extending from the Future Life Park, conceived as a roofed plaza reminiscent of a sandbox. Open and unbounded, it welcomes anyone, regardless of age or background, to pause, wander, or simply exist. With no borders and no reservations, the pavilion became a place of chance encounters, where diverse workshops unfolded organically over time.

The great roof, called the “Tree of Creation,” embraces beauty and eeriness, coherence and dissonance, clarity and ambiguity. These opposing qualities are intentionally interwoven. Beneath it, at the level of the roots, lies a completely darkened theater. Within this circular, dome-like space, 360-degree imagery surrounds the body, accompanied by live performances that change day by day. Here, visitors are invited into a primordial field of resonance—one that is felt not only through sight and sound, but through the body itself.

The architecture experiments with the coexistence of order and chaos by gently obscuring the roles of its materials. Elements lacking uniformity support one another, forming a fragile yet coherent whole. Every component is designed to be light enough for two people to carry, pursuing a temporary architectural expression through steel, timber, and fabric. Throughout the exhibition, drawings and words were continuously added to the wood, tiles, and textiles, allowing the pavilion to grow and transform—an architecture in motion. After the Expo, parts of the pavilion will be relocated, in a renewed form, to the future Children’s Museum site in Fukuyama, Hiroshima, carrying its memory forward.