I’m wearing my American Food 2.0 shirt today thanks to New Holland and the trip they put together last week for agricultural journalists. While visiting Expo Milano 2015 I made sure I stopped at the USA Pavilion. The pavilion is sponsored in part by CNH Industrial.
The theme for the USA Pavilion is “American Food 2.0: United to Feed the Planet.”
Expo Milano 2015 will enable the USA Pavilion to showcase the United States as an innovator not only in the food sector, but also in many aspects of culture, science and business. Feeding ourselves engages a massive infrastructure, advanced technologies, and dynamic systems that touch on just about every aspect of the world we live in. Each step from farm to table reflects a set of values and connections that impact our identities and shape our future.
The USA Pavilion is a one-of-a-kind building designed by architect James Biber of Biber Architects in New York. It is a 35,000 square foot space within Expo Milano’s 3.6 million square foot sustainable “smart city.” The building is a multi-level experience that flows with activity from top to bottom, side to side. It includes a massive vertical farm that will be harvested daily. “I’ve drawn inspiration from the straightforward, ‘honest’ agricultural buildings that are part of our nation’s history,” said Biber in a recent interview about the process of creating the USA Pavilion. “It is a very simple building, and when people look at it, they’ll instantly understand exactly how it was made.”
One of the very unique features of the building is on an outside wall that consists of panels of vegetables growing as part of a “vertical farm.” Another is Food Truck Nation. There are six food trucks located near the pavilion serving traditional American food like hamburgers, BBQ and lobster rolls.