Milan's Expo 2015 is very much like a world's fair with international food production and sustainability as its primary theme. Naturally there were hosts of school groups making there way through, gathering stickers, posing with people in national dress and sampling food - I liked the Iranian Dolmas, but I'm certain the Belgian waffles and fries were a big hit with this demographic.
The architecture was generally amazing. This Malaysian Pavillion exemplified a popular theme which included curvilinear organic shapes utilizing particularly natural looking materials. Another theme was mirrored surfaces, brining you into the space and seamlessly, blending architecture with audience.
The real standout was easily the Supermarket of the Future. The thinking and technology came from MIT's Carla Ratti's Senseable City Lab and her design firm, Carla Rassi's Associatti, whom worked with Italian food chain COOP to execute this futuristic mode of grocery shopping.
Want to ensure that heirloom tomato doesn't get bruised? Let the robotic arms prepack it for you. Then everything is moved to the counter for scanning, but don't worry about those pesky scanning codes that never seem to work, just put your basket on the counter and the readers "find" all your barcodes, even if everything is piled up.
Think about how increasingly difficult it is to find a regular person-operated check out counter and the increased interest many of us have in what we're buying, where it comes from and how it might benefit us. It's not much of a stretch to imagine that this will indeed be the supermarket of our not-too-distant future.
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