PHOTOS: Sergio Grazia; Roland Halbe; Hufton+Crow; Hengzhong Lv

China dominated much of Expo 2015's horizon with a 49,000-square-foot pavilion that features an undulating roof merging the silhouette of Beijing's central business district with the profile of a mountain range. The roof, reminiscent of traditional Chinese pottery construction, was constructed using 1,052 panels in 300 variations fabricated from 53 miles of bamboo strips. Attendees enter the pavilion through an enormous garden, whose structure and statuary was inspired by Beijing's fabled Forbidden City, including thousands of marigolds and other flowers blooming in supernaturally neat rows.

photos: Avant Video Systems

Israel's history of invention in agriculture includes the cherry tomato and a variety of strawberry that can grow year-round. The country's resourcefulness continued at Expo 2015 with a vertical garden that promised to turn farming not so much on its ear, but on its side. Built of 100-percent-recycled materials, the gigantic Green wall, measuring roughly 230-by-40 feet, was alive with neatly cropped rectangles of thriving wheat, rice, and corn. Besides offering an abundance of nourishment, the unusual, eye-catching wall buffers the building from the ambient noise of thousands of attendees, and scrubs the air of pollutants and greenhouse gasses. Fed by a drip-irrigation technology that consumes 98 percent less water than traditional farming, the pavilion's undeniable focal point suggested a way to stave off the drought and desertification that's destroying nearly 30 million acres of land every year.