At the 2025 World Expo in Osaka, a quietly poetic installation at the European Pavilion has been catching visitors by surprise. Not for its size or flashiness, but for its ability to make people pause, look up, and wonder: What is this cloud floating above me?
The installation is the work of Hempstatic, a young European startup that has created a constellation of 43 suspended panels—delicate in appearance, but bold in message. These bio-based sound absorbers, made from hemp, lime, and wood, seem to hover like a gentle mist in the air. Part artwork, part architectural intervention, they invite both sensory and philosophical reflection.
Though light and cloud-like in form, the panels carry weighty ideas: about the future of building materials, about how architecture can serve people and the planet, and about our ability to coexist harmoniously with nature.
What makes the installation even more compelling is its subtlety. Unlike most exhibitions that announce their innovations loudly, Hempstatic’s materials conceal their origins. You don’t immediately recognize them as hemp or lime or timber composites. They don’t feel industrial. They feel… natural. This sense of unfamiliar familiarity sparks curiosity. What exactly are we looking at? And why does it feel so calming?
Marieke, a sound designer from Antwerp, had a visceral reaction: “At first, I just noticed how quiet the space felt. Then someone told me the ceiling was made of hemp. I was stunned. It reminded me of how wool smells after it's been in the sun—warm, earthy, real.” She’s worked in theaters and recording studios for years, usually using synthetic acoustic panels. “These feel alive. And beautiful.”
The installation is more than a sensory experience—it’s a living response to the Expo’s theme of sustainability and its “3R” principles: Recycle, Reuse, and Recycle again. Each panel in the installation can be taken down, reused elsewhere, or safely returned to the earth. The hemp used is industrial-grade, fast-growing, and environmentally beneficial. It requires little water, replenishes soil, and absorbs large amounts of CO₂. Compared to conventional materials like concrete, its environmental impact is almost negligible.
To understand the deeper potential of these materials, consider Peter, a retired Dutch engineer living in Arles, southern France. Since leaving the construction industry, Peter has been experimenting with homemade structures made from hemp and lime. “I used to build massive steel frames,” he says, “but now I want to create things that leave no trace.” His small backyard canopy, made from hempcrete, provides shade and insulation—and, when it’s no longer needed, it can biodegrade naturally. “It comes from the earth, and it’ll go back to the earth. That feels right.”
That same philosophy runs through Hempstatic’s design. Their approach challenges traditional ideas of architecture as something permanent and monumental. Instead, they present buildings—or at least elements of buildings—as temporary, modular, and even nomadic. Architecture, they suggest, can breathe. It can move. It can decay gracefully and leave nothing behind but a memory.
In a setting like the World Expo—where countries compete to impress with dazzling technology, towering pavilions, and futuristic visions—Hempstatic took a softer, slower route. They didn’t shout; they whispered. But their whisper is resonating deeply.
There’s no flashy VR. No touchscreen walls. No robotic arms or holograms. Just quiet panels made from plants, floating like clouds, reminding us of the simplest and most radical idea: that the future of architecture might lie not in advancing beyond nature, but in returning to it.
As Giulia, a sustainability researcher from Turin, said after visiting the installation: “Hempstatic doesn’t give you an answer. It gives you a window. A window into what materials could be, what buildings could feel like, and how we might live differently.”
Maybe the future isn’t about high-rise towers or concrete jungles. Maybe it’s about soft clouds made of hemp. About homes that breathe, that listen, and that disappear without a trace.
In an age of loud declarations and bold visions, a whisper made of hemp may just be the most powerful message of all.