No Knocks for Knoxville

By Wolf Von Eckardt

A World's Fair that exudes an air of friendly intimacy

Some great international expositions will always be remembered affectionately for their cultural flair and technical innovations. Others, particularly some recent, much ballyhooed U.S. fairs, have left only debts and deserted weed fields. Chances are good, however, that no one will knock the Knoxville fair, which opens this week and closes in October.

This hope is based on the ground's advantageous valley location in the heart of the city, and the decision of smart planners to design the fair as a fair rather than a permanent mausoleum of grandiose ambitions. About half of its buildings are temporary and can be dismantled and their parts sold when the fair closes. Even the trees are planted in wire baskets for possible later transplanting. Yet none of this impermanence detracts from the fun, let alone the ingenious beautification of a site that was a messy, abandoned railroad yard when groundbreaking started a little more than two years ago.

The Knoxville International Energy Exposition is not a great and important fair like the great and important World's Fairs. The first of these was held in 1851 in London, where 14,000 exhibitors displayed the wonders of a new industrial age. The greatest wonder of all was the Crystal Palace. Designed by Joseph Paxton, the palace introduced a new prefabricated architecture of glass, iron and wood.

The Paris World's Fair of 1889 produced another herald of modern architectural engineering, Gustave Eiffel's 1,010-ft. tower. Except for the first Ferris wheel, the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 did not really advance structural engineering. But it was a dream of what the American city might be. Designed under the direction of Architect Daniel Burnham and Landscape Architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also created New York's Central Park, it helped inspire the monumental heart of Washington, D.C., as well as public buildings from coast to coast.

Later World's Fairs--St. Louis (1904), San Francisco (1915), Chicago (1933-34), New York (1939-40 and 1964-65), Brussels (1958), Montreal (1967) and Osaka, Japan (1970)--never achieved the cultural and architectural importance of those early ones. Both New York fairs were gaudy happenings that turned architecture into a tool of advertising. The 1964-65 New York fair has left bizarre ghosts of its architectural arrogance, such as the Unisphere and the New York State Pavilion. Montreal's Expo 67, in contrast, leaves a pleasant memory of some fine buildings and a colorful environment inspired by the most beautiful fair in this century--the Swiss National Exposition at Lausanne in 1964. Lausanne, a national fair, was an exemplary work of art, excitingly varied and yet harmonious.

Knoxville's energy fair does not pretend to be in the same big league with the so-called universal expositions, which are classified by the Bureau of International Expositions, established in Paris in 1928. Smaller fairs, such as Knoxville's or the proposed 1984 fair in New Orleans, are categorized as "specialized" expositions and are devoted to one major theme. Exhibitors usually share large halls.

Knoxville has tried to make sure that its fair would not violate the cityscape. The fair's entrepreneurs laid down a rule that their chief architect must be a local firm. At times, this may be as disastrous as hiring your friendly corner grocer to cater a big, formal wedding. In this case, the choice of McCarty Bullock Holsaple Inc., with Bruce McCarty, 61, as executive architect and his son Doug, 32, as design coordinator, proved most fortunate. "We studied the problem longer and harder than our firm, let alone an outside architect, could financially afford," says the elder McCarty. "The ups and downs of fund raising gave us plenty of time. We spent that time thinking not only how to design a fair that would instruct and amuse some 65,000 people a day but would also integrate downtown with the University of Tennessee campus and the nearby residential neighborhood."

To mend the rent in the city's fabric caused by the railyard, the McCarty team and its various consultants cleaned up a culvert and created a small lake, restored and enhanced the natural beauty of the valley, and painstakingly preserved old trees and natural features. Virtually all the existing old buildings, notably the charming Victorian Louisville and Nashville Railway Station, have been restored and converted to fair uses.

Much of the exhibition space consists of plain industrial lofts, built of corrugated metal that can be easily dismantled and reused. Painted in two shades of blue and arranged in a variety of configurations that hug the rugged terrain, these buildings provide a pleasant visual harmony. The excitement is left to the various displays inside. Outdoor color is supplied by clusters of bright yellow tents that protect food stalls and other services from wind and rain. The kiosks inside the tents are constructed of secondhand industrial glass plates and can be recycled. After the kiosks, the most elegant structure is the 1,500-seat Tennessee State Amphitheater, designed for shelter, acoustics and a view of the fairgrounds.

There is nothing dull about this uniform background architecture. On the contrary, it heightens the liveliness of flags, signs, furnishings and the other doodads and contrivances that give glamour and clamor to every fair. It makes the Knoxville fairground, with its gently winding, rising and falling walkways, its lake and amphitheater and the quiet presence of the downtown skyline, a pretty as well as an active place. There is a sense of friendly intimacy about it.

Only the structures intended to be exciting are a bore. The official architects did not think the cliche of a symbolic tower was needed. The budget precluded building anything high enough to stand out in the fairground valley. But the management persisted and hired another architect, Bruce B. Thompson. He came up with a lumpy gold ball atop a clumsy shaft called the Sunsphere.

The $21 million U.S. Pavilion suffers from similar mediocrity. It is a six-story structure, designed by Atlanta Architects Finch Alexander Barnes Rothschild & Paschal Inc., that vaguely resembles the Pompidou Center in Paris--with a fig leaf. Pompidou's daringly exposed ducts and pipes are coyly muted. This federal contribution houses energy exhibits. One possible post-fair use for the pavilion is as a University of Tennessee energy research center. But now that acute energy concerns are drowned in the oil glut, other uses also are under discussion.

The most memorable exhibit, aside from a display of the People's Republic of China's treasured antiquities, is the Federal Express Pavilion, designed by New York's Leonard Levitan (La Ronde amusement center of Expo 67, U.S. Bicentennial exhibit in the Soviet Union in 1976). It features a laser-beam-light composition in the night sky and a multimedia show about communications that is entertaining and thought provoking.

Definite architectural and financial studies for future use of the fair site are not yet completed. The hope is that a big developer will turn the fair into a new, economically mixed, primarily residential community. New Orleans is watching closely.

--By Wolf Von Eckardt

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