Finnish Pavilion The Finnish pavilion was designed by
Alvar Aalto, following an open architectural competition held in 1936, where he had won both first and second prize, the winning entry "Le bois est en marche" forming the basis for the pavilion as built. Finland had been given a difficult, sloping wooded site near the
Trocadéro, something which Aalto was able to exploit in creating a ground plan featuring an irregular chain of volumes joined in a sort of collage - with small, open, cubic pavilions together with two larger exhibition halls. The entire complex curved around a shady garden with Japanese touches. The pavilion was also an advertisement for Finland's prime export, wood, as the building was built entirely of timber. French architecture historian Fabienne Chevallier has argued that at the time French critics were baffled by Aalto's building because though it was built of wood – and thus endorsing an image of what they perceived Finland to be – they were unprepared for Aalto's avant-gardism.
Canadian Pavilion Canada had initially not planned to take part in the exposition because of reasons of cost. In February 1936, at a party in Ottawa,
Raymond Brugère, the French minister-plenipotentiary pressed the prime minister
William Lyon Mackenzie King and his Quebec lieutenant
Ernest Lapointe, about Canada taking part in the
Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, saying he very much wanted Canada to have a pavilion. King hesitated, saying he did not know if his government could afford the cost of building a pavilion, but Brugère forced his hand by sending a telegram to Paris, saying that Canada would take part, leading to an announcement being made in Paris. Fitting in the architectural master-plan of the master architect
Jacques Gréber at the foot of the
Eiffel Tower, and inspired by the shape of a
grain elevator, the Canadian pavilion included
Joseph-Émile Brunet's 28-foot sculpture of a buffalo (1937), and
Charles Comfort's
The Romance of Nickel. Paintings by Brunet, sculpted panels on the outside of the structure, and several thematic stands inside the Canadian pavilion depicted aspects of Canadian culture.
Norwegian Pavilion The Norwegian pavilion was designed by ,
Arne Korsmo and . It included
Hannah Rygen's tapestry
Ethiopia.
Spanish Pavilion The
Spanish pavilion was arranged by the President of Spain
Spanish Republican government and built by the Spanish architect
Josep Lluis Sert. It attracted extra attention because the exposition took place during the
Spanish Civil War. The pavilion included
Pablo Picasso's
Guernica, the now-famous depiction of the horrors of war, as well as
Alexander Calder's sculpture
Mercury Fountain and
Joan Miró's painting
Catalan peasant in revolt.
German Pavilion Two of the other notable pavilions were those of
Nazi Germany and the
Soviet Union. The organization of the world exhibition had placed the German and the Soviet pavilions directly across from each other.
Hitler had desired to withdraw from participation, but his architect
Albert Speer convinced him to participate, showing Hitler his plans for the German pavilion. Speer later revealed in his autobiographies that having had a clandestine look at the plans for the Soviet pavilion, he designed the German pavilion to represent a
bulwark against Communism. The preparation and construction of the exhibits were plagued by delay. On the opening day of the exhibition, only the German and the Soviet pavilions had been completed. This, as well as the fact that the two pavilions faced each other, turned the exhibition into a competition between the two great ideological rivals. Speer's pavilion was culminated by a tall tower crowned with the symbols of the Nazi state: an eagle and the
swastika. The pavilion was conceived as a monument to "German pride and achievement". It was to broadcast to the world that a new and powerful Germany had a restored sense of national pride. At night, the pavilion was illuminated by floodlights.
Josef Thorak's sculpture
Comradeship stood outside the pavilion, depicting two enormous nude males, clasping hands and standing defiantly side by side, in a pose of mutual defense and "racial camaraderie".
British Pavilion Britain had not been expecting such a competitive exposition, and its planned budget was only a small fraction of Germany's.
Frank Pick, the chairman of the Council for Art and Industry, appointed
Oliver Hill as architect but told him to avoid modernism and to focus on traditional crafts. The main architectural element of Hill's pavilion was a large white box, decorated externally with a painted
frieze by
John Skeaping and internally with giant photographic figures which included
Neville Chamberlain fishing. Its contents were crafts objects arranged according to English words which had become
loanwords in French, such as "sport" and "weekend", and included some items by renowned potter
William Worrall. There was considerable British criticism that the result was unrepresentative of Britain and compared poorly to the other pavilions' projections of national strength. ==Awards==