Marco Brambilla Reimagines 135 Years of World Expos in New Wolfsonian Installation
A century of utopian design compressed into a simulation that questions how AI shapes progress.
Summary
- The three channel video installation pulls together 135 years of world expos into a single digital landscape
- Brambilla pulls from eighteen expos, from Paris 1889 to Osaka 2025
The Wolfsonian FIU in Miami Beach will open Marco Brambilla: After Utopia on December 2, 2025. The three channel video installation pulls together 135 years of world expos into a single digital landscape, compressing a century of architectural ambition into one looping scene.
Brambilla pulls from 18 expos, from Paris 1889 to Osaka 2025, each represented by its defining pavilion. These structures once promoted national confidence and a belief that technology would guide the future. In After Utopia they merge into towering vertical screens where time and geography flatten.
AI generated figures navigate the environment using historic attendance patterns as their script. The result feels like watching the past reenacted inside a simulation, with Paris, Montreal, Shanghai and Osaka appearing side by side. These visuals are trained on materials from The Wolfsonian’s archives, including blueprints and brochures.
The piece lands in a moment when AI is no longer viewed only as a tool for progress but also as a system people are unsure how much to trust. Brambilla leans into that tension. “If AI becomes the architect of experience, we have to think about how much control or imagination we are giving away,” he says in a press statement.
The exhibition runs from December 2, 2025 to March 1, 2026, with a companion installation in the museum’s Bridge Tender House.
The. Wolfsonian FIU
1001 Washington Ave
Miami Beach, FL 33139
