At the 3rd Participants Meeting in Shanghai on 13 and 14 November 2008, Germany signed its plot lease agreement with the Chinese EXPO organisers. The signing ceremony was followed by a turf-cutting ceremony on the 6,000 m² plot on 15 November, at which the German project team and the Chinese EXPO partners were present. Apart from a multitude of press representatives, the first event on the German plot was also attended by high-ranking representatives of the EXPO organisers, the German Consulate General and various German institutions and companies. The Commissioners General of other participating countries, such as France, Canada and Australia, were also among the guests who witnessed this important step in the building of the pavilion. With the turf now cut, Germany is one of the first countries to start construction work. 

"I can still clearly remember the first time I came to Shanghai with my colleague Wolfgang Löffler to hold preliminary talks with you, the EXPO organisers, back in September 2006. We were shown the potential location of the German Pavilion– though it was only on a map at the time. So I’m all the more pleased, a good two years later, to be standing on this plot of earth, not far from the river and bridge, imagining what it will be like when, in much less then two years, tens of thousands visit this area every day. That image is combined with a large sense of responsibility for the 6,000 m² beneath our feet because the German Pavilion, "balancity", has to be standing here by 1 May 2010," said Commissioner General Dietmar Schmitz, from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, in his speech at the ceremony. Since 15 November 2008, a construction site sign has also been in place, with information about balancity and the parties responsible for the creation of the building.