The 2015 Milan Exposition makes clear that the grand European exposition as a national project is unlikely to be revived anytime soon. Perhaps the bleakest assessment on the exposition form came from British architecture and design critic Oliver Wainwright. Writing for The Guardian before the expo ended, he argued that in the wake of two disastrous prior European expos, Seville's Expo 92, which left the city deeply in debt, and the poorly-attended Hanover 2000, ‘it seems clearer than ever that the format of the world exposition is well past its expiry date, leaving a trail of debt and destruction wherever it strikes’ (2015). The massive cost-overruns of the Milan Expo, which blew the budget out to €1.3 billion, the unsightly unfinished pavilions that required a €1 million to conceal (Cameron 2015), and the full-scale anti-Expo rioting on the streets of Milan at the time of its opening made this one of the most fraught and criticized international expositions in history. Milan Expo master planner Jacques Herzog spoke out against way the expo was executed in the post-design phase, characterizing it as a ‘vanity fair,’ (Heilmeyer 2015, p. 54) while even Pope Francis weighed in, responding to the fair's theme of ‘Feeding the Planet’ with the observation that the Expo itself is part of a ‘paradox of abundance’ that ‘obeys the culture of waste and does not contribute to a model of equitable and sustainable development’ (Day 2015). With 21.5 million visitors, Milan's Expo attracted only a few million people more than Hanover's (2000), and a number of European nations chose not to participate, suggesting that fully international fairs in Europe may no longer be viable.