The UK Pavilion Expo 2025: From Inventions to Innovation

Expo 2025 is in full swing, under the scorching heat of the Japanese summer. Visitors shade themselves with parasols or queue to enter indoor spaces just for the air-conditioning. That’s when I spot something familiar, Pimm’s, being served at an outdoor seating area of a pavilion.

The UK Pavilion is a modern, minimalist structure, almost the opposite of how the UK is typically imagined in Japan, where something more historical or classically formal. At first glance, with its minimalist façade, the building might not even register as the UK Pavilion, if not for the Pimm’s (…or the red phone box or the Union Jack near the entrance).

The UK Pavilion (Photo: Arden Kreuzer)

Come Build the Future

Each national pavilion has a theme. For the UK, it’s “Come Build the Future,” focusing on how the country offers fertile ground for creativity and innovation. The pavilion guides visitors through a narrative experience, projections and bold use of AI-generated visuals. The story follows Kenji, a Japanese father visiting the UK on business, video-calling his daughter Mei. As she gets excited listening to her father’s stories, PIX, a shape-shifting mascot, whisks her away on a journey through the UK. The path through the pavilion is divided into rooms that highlight both historic and contemporary British innovations, everything from the telephone and steam engine to global contributions in music and the creative industries.

PIX, the UK’s mascot for the World Expo 2025 (Courtesy of the UK Pavilion)

Interactive exhibition space at the UK Pavilion (Courtesy of the UK Pavilion)

The pavilion also includes a restaurant and bar. On the ground floor, the casual restaurant serves classic British fare like fish and chips, chicken tikka masala, or a playful “Ploughman’s Bento.” Garden-side seating is styled after an English garden, perfect for sipping beer, cider, or Pimm’s in the shade. Upstairs, a Johnnie Walker bar serves not only whisky, but also a selection of gins and even English wines.

The whisky bar inside the UK Pavilion (Courtesy of the UK Pavilion)

Interior of the UK Pavilion, featuring a large-scale projection (Courtesy of the UK Pavilion)

The building was designed by London-based WOO Architects. The pavilion’s stacked-block form symbolizes creative freedom and the idea of building something new. A woven pattern in the pavilion’s exterior is a nod to the Industrial Revolution, which was largely driven by the textile industry. Fittingly, Osaka is often likened to Manchester for its role in driving that transformation in Japan.

The message isn’t just about the achievements. It’s also designed to resonate with Japanese visitors by highlighting shared ground: both countries are island nations with constitutional monarchies, a cultural appreciation for tea, and mutual investments in education and healthcare.

A Historic Bond, Still Evolving

The long queue to enter the UK Pavilion suggests strong interest from visitors, which reflects over 400 years of interaction between the UK and Japan.

As early as 1587, two young Japanese people were brought to England by explorer Thomas Cavendish after their Spanish galleon was captured. In 1600, William Adams (the historical model for John Blackthorne in Shogun) became the first Briton to set foot in Japan. In 1613, when John Saris arrived in Japan aboard the Clove, securing trade on behalf of the East India Company. That relationship deepened in 1902 with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, a military agreement often cited as the first between a Western and non-Western nation, and an achievement of Meiji Japan that marked a rare instance of a Western power treating a nation led by people of color as a peer.

Today, ties between the two countries are stronger than ever, across diplomacy, trade, education and culture. Perhaps because the UK is already so familiar as a global presence, the pavilion avoids leaning into a theme-park version of its identity. Instead, the focus is on shared futures, on connections, ongoing exchanges and creativity as a common language.

Japan–British Exhibition of 1910 at White City, London
(Poster printed by Bemrose & Sons Ltd., public domain)

William Adams meeting Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, often mistaken for the emperor in early accounts
(1866 illustration for a book by William Dalton, public domain)

Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), dressed as a rickshaw driver in a happi coat bought in Kyoto during his 1922 Japan visit
(Bibliothèque nationale de France, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)