A GREAT FAIR COMING UP

THE big assets of a world's fair are planning, imagination, architecture and money. All these are clearly beginning to show at Expo 67, the Canadian World's Fair now being built on a pair of islands, one man-made and one man-enlarged, in the St. Lawrence River opposite Montreal. Comparisons are inevitable with New York's fair, which was good fun, particularly in its imaginative displays of industrial show business, but never really made the grade. Unlike the New York Fair, Expo got accreditation from Paris' choosy Bureau of International Expositions, which demands that each nation pays for its own exhibition. At Montreal, more than 70 nations are represented, and their pavilions are already rising in spectacular steel and concrete. Opening day is next April 28, 1967.

Tallest structure in the overall picture below is the $9,300,000 U.S. pavilion, Buckminster Fuller's 187-ft. geodesic dome. In front of it, across an arm of the St. Lawrence, the Russians are lavishing $15 million on a vast exhibition hall roofed with a wing curved as if for takeoff. All exhibitors chipped in $45 million for the hexagon-sided theme pavilions ("Man and His World") at left on the far island. For the combination of an inverted-step pyramid and a truncated pylon in the picture at left, Great Britain is ignoring austerity to invest $7,500,000.

The shapes are even more exciting than the stakes. West German architects are pitching a swooping, reinforced tent over the pavilion at right, while France's designers support the roof of their eccentric circle from extended vertical ribs. Most eye challenging of all is Israeli Architect Moshe Safdie's "Habitat," a visionary, multilevel village, complete with shops. Prefabricated, prestressed concrete cubes are equipped with kitchens, bathrooms, wiring, plumbing, insulation and windows made in an assembly-line plant on the site. Then the units, averaging 80 tons apiece, are crane-hoisted into position like gargantuan building blocks. When the project is finished, more than 30 fully furnished houses, with from one to four bedrooms, are scheduled to go on display. The other 120-odd are already being rented at a fast pace as showrooms or living space by governments, corporations and individuals for the six-month run of the fair.

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