At Expo 2025 Japan, the Future of Life pavilion—one of the eight Signature Pavilions anchoring the event—offers a poetic and immersive vision of what life might become as humans and technology continue to co-evolve. Designed by renowned Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team, the pavilion explores how scientific innovation can extend not only the boundaries of daily life but also our understanding of what it means to be alive. Its architecture rises like a sculpted landform, wrapped in a shimmering skin of water—a fluid metaphor linking organic life to future synthetic forms.
Visitors enter through this watery membrane into three distinct zones. The first, Journey of Life, draws on Japan’s centuries-old tradition of animating objects, from ancient haniwa to androids, framing robotics not as rupture, but as cultural continuity. The second, The Future of 2075, presents a richly imagined world where robots and humans live side by side, with speculative products and rituals brought to life through immersive projections. In the third zone, Mahoroba, visitors encounter a distant future a thousand years ahead, in which consciousness may transcend physical form.
Complementing the exhibition is The Changing Waters, an interactive AR and lighting installation that responds to visitors’ gestures and materials added to water basins, reinforcing the pavilion’s core message: life is ever-shifting, interdependent, and fluid. Through architecture, technology, and story, Ishiguro’s pavilion invites us to imagine a freer, expanded way of living—one no longer bound by body, time, or space.
Images courtesy of EXPO 2025 OSAKA