 In 1968 , the West German government invited Stockhausen to collaborate on the German Pavilion at the 1970 World Fair in Osaka and to create a joint multimedia project for it with artist Otto Piene . Other collaborators on the project included the pavilion 's architect , Fritz Bornemann , Fritz Winckel , director of the Electronic Music Studio at the Technical University of Berlin , and engineer Max Mengeringhausen . The pavilion theme was " gardens of music " , in keeping with which Bornemann intended " planting " the exhibition halls beneath a broad lawn , with a connected auditorium " sprouting " above ground . Initially , Bornemann conceived this auditorium in the form of an amphitheatre , with a central orchestra podium and surrounding audience space . In the summer of 1968 , Stockhausen met with Bornemann and persuaded him to change this conception to a spherical space with the audience in the centre , surrounded by loudspeaker groups in seven rings at different " latitudes " around the interior walls of the sphere ( Kurtz 1992 , 166 ; Föllmer 1996 ) . 
