Designing The Pinnacle Of Themed Pavilions

The groundbreaking Saudi Arabia pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai (Photo by Su Xiaopo/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

A seemingly endless stretch of desert doesn’t sound like somewhere you are likely to find a world-leading themed entertainment attraction but almost four years ago that is precisely what swung open its doors in Dubai for a six-month run.

Although it hasn’t yet resumed operations, the otherworldly soaring structure still stands and a visit makes guests feel like they are on the set of a science fiction film more than any theme park can do.

Theme parks all over the world strive to create versions of what they imagine cities will look like in the future. In contrast, Dubai has actually built one.

Called Expo City, it sits on the site of the Expo 2020 world’s fair which came to a close three years ago. The event attracted a massive 24.1 million visitors from all over the world despite taking place at the height of the pandemic. They didn’t just travel there to escape their troubles at home but also to visit an attraction unlike any other.

Avant-garde architecture is dotted around the sprawling Expo City site which sprouted up like an oasis in the middle of the desert. There’s a cavernous cream-coloured dome, a pavilion that looks like an upturned satellite dish and another that resembles a giant fidget-spinner. Towering silvery umbrellas are scattered throughout the beautifully-landscaped grounds to give respite from the sun and the sidewalks are coated in a rubbery red substance so that jogging is easier on your heels.

The landscape will seem instantly familiar to anyone who has been to Disney’s science-themed Epcot park in Orlando. However, the big difference is that there’s nothing Mickey Mouse about the structures at Expo as they all serve a purpose in an actual city.

The Expo site cost an estimated $8 billion to build according to architectural agency HOK which was the lead design firm on the original master plan. The government of Dubai footed the bill but it was far from a flight of fancy.

The Expo was deliberately built on a site which the government had already earmarked for development as a new district of Dubai. When the ornate carbon fiber gates at the entrance to Expo 2020 closed for the final time in March 2022, its conversion into Expo City began.

City Of Tomorrow

Dubai doesn’t do anything by halves which is why the Expo City site is still being developed though it already feels like a city of tomorrow. Condominiums and offices now sit side by side with some of the most futuristic pavilions and attractions from the Expo. Many of them have mastered the art of edutainment as they make learning fun in a way which usually only theme parks can do.

Three pavilions have resumed service so far and although they are all worth a visit, the one themed to transport is the best of the bunch. It starts with a trip on the world’s largest elevator which doesn’t sound thrilling but the experience is the closest you can get to a Disney ride without being in the house of the Mouse.

It takes place in a dark circular room with seats around the edge. As the room starts to rise, the roar of car engines and horses echo around it from hidden surround-sound speakers in time with a light show on multi-color LED strips hanging down from above.

When you get out you’re met with the sight of galloping horses projected onto a curved wall. They symbolize the first form of transport and set the scene for the rest of the pavilion which takes visitors on a journey through the history of mobility. There are eerily-lifelike soaring statues, rugs projected inside mock-ups of ancient Arabic houses and a replica of mission control for a space shuttle.

Ironically, Expo City’s most breathtaking attractions are free. The horseshoe-shaped waterfall is a must-see. Created by WET Design, the wizards behind many of the fountains in Disney parks, water cascades down it, seemingly out of nowhere, in time to music written by Ramin Djawadi, composer of Marvel’s Iron Man movie theme. At night, projections are beamed onto it to make it seem like the water is rushing back up when it hits the bottom and flamethrowers shoot up when the images reach the top.

At night, Expo City’s centerpiece dome is the place to be as it is home to a son-et-lumière show like no other when surreal scenes are beamed onto the inside of it. One show turns the dome into a giant planetarium whilst another makes it seem like a rocket taking off as buildings scroll down the sides at speed. It’s a dizzying display which makes it look like the giant steel structure is spinning even though it actually doesn’t move an inch. Tiny multicolor LEDs set into the struts flash in time with the scenes and look like a starfield when it finally goes dark.

That’s just the start as several structures from Expo 2020 have not yet re-opened. One is comfortably the most cutting-edge and breathtaking themed pavilion ever built. A temporary attraction which is more high-tech than anything you will find in a Disney or Universal theme park sounds like the stuff of fantasyland. Not in Dubai.

Flying The Flag

The soaring jet black structure looks like a gigantic closed book and seems to defy gravity as it sticks out of the ground at an angle with seemingly nothing supporting it. The pavilion promoted Saudi Arabia and it is fair to say that few other countries have ever made as much of a splash at an Expo as it did.

Its imposing angular pavilion was packed with record-breaking audio-visual technology and there is good reason for this.

Saudi Arabia is in the middle of a plan to diversify its economy from being reliant on traditional fossil fuels to one which is driven by the tech sector by 2030.

The country is becoming a hub for everything from Artificial Intelligence to esports and is commissioning cutting-edge architecture to reflect its transformation. The most famous projects are a vertical city inside a mirrored horizontal tower and a giant cube containing projected virtual environments on its interior walls. The striking architecture of the Saudi Arabia pavilion symbolized this vision and it was far from skin deep.

Welcome messages streamed down the sides of the sloping pavilion on seven high-definition LED strips alternating with rows of the pavilion’s pitch-black exterior paneling. Nothing was left to chance and 1,584 meters of Pixline LED lights was embedded into the structure to give the pavilion a color-changing outline that could be seen from afar at night.

The plaza underneath the sloping structure is filled with 7,798 blocks which change color when visitors step on them. It is reminiscent of games in the post-ride area of Epcot’s Journey into Imagination with Figment pavilion but on a much grander scale. It is the world’s largest interactive lighting floor and it is reflected in silvery LED screens on the underside of the angular building above it.

At 1,302.5 square meters, the array also sets a record as the world’s largest LED mirror screen display. Footage of Saudi Arabia’s futuristic smart cities and rugged landscape played on it during the Expo showcasing the country’s heritage and its eye on the future.

Cleverly, custom designed electronic lifts revealed theatrical lighting rigs which are hidden in the sloping structure. It set the scene for shows on the plaza which played during the day.

The pavilion was the product of over 2,000 workers across more than 20 agencies, covering everything from content creation, music and engineering to landscaping, light design and plumbing. Multiple companies were responsible for creating the footage in the pavilion along with a master contractor.

Similarly, the AV contractor, Austrian firm Kraftwerk Living Technologies, was supported by a consultant who reviewed the budgets, cross-checked them against markets and approved the system design as well as the drawing submissions before signing off the installations. This was all the responsibility of 767 AV Consultants, which was founded in 2006 by Graham Wickman, one of the most talented and experienced industry players.

Wickman has been working in AV design since 1979 when he joined London’s prestigious Natural History Museum’s special effects section to work on system design, technical and sound production. Rising through the AV industry’s ranks, he eventually joined technology services company Electrosonic where his clients included the Smithsonian, Chicago Field Museum and the Singapore Science Centre.

His expertise ensured that guests streamed through the Saudi Arabia pavilion’s turnstiles despite the eye-catching entertainment taking place on its plaza.

Once they stepped through the doors the first attraction they were met with was an innovative circular waterfall created by Spanish designers GHESA. Water poured down around the edges of a ring and stopped momentarily every so often to create patterns in the liquid curtain. This gave children, and kids at heart, a chance to jump into the dry patch in the middle without getting doused.

Occasionally someone slow got soaked which was welcome as temperatures in Dubai regularly soared above 85 degrees during the Expo.

Telling The Story

Next up, the queue snaked past a 68 square meter curved LED screen showcasing stirring 4K scenes of Saudi Arabia’s stunning landscape and coastline. “The content and the story being told was created by Boris Micka Associates (BMA),” says Wickman adding that his company worked closely with British firm Philip Hartley Associates which was commissioned to deliver the pavilion’s interior and exterior experiences.

“Museum and exhibition designers are normally the people that take the brief from the client and come up with the ideas. Then if those ideas have technical elements they are interpreted by people such as myself, or in this case Kraftwerk, to produce an AV design. Our job was to approve all of their work from design through to completion.”

Giving further detail, he explains that 767’s role on projects like this is “to make sure that the ideas that the designer has are actually possible and suggest alternatives both in terms of interpretation and technology if what was originally conceived is not quite possible.”

After passing the sweeping screen in the pavilion, guests took an escalator upwards past intricate models of historical sites in Saudi Arabia. They were created by Adirondack Studios, theme park specialists who have worked with Universal Studios in Orlando, Hollywood and Singapore. The models were seamlessly integrated with screens and even had projection-mapped people on them. The audio seemed to follow the visitors on the journey upwards as it played from 12 hidden pendant speakers.

The display reflected the impression that most people have of Saudi Arabia but then came a showcase of what the country is really like. The stage was as stunning as it gets.

The escalator led to two domed high-resolution LED screens with a walkway around the seam between them. The upper screen was 32 meters wide and almost 9 meters tall at its highest point. Below it sat one of the largest concave LED screens ever built giving the duo a combined area of 320 square meters. Speakers were installed in the ceiling as well as the handrail lining the walkway to make the audio immersive.

Capturing the footage involved 70 people shooting for 72 days at 22 locations. They included cutting-edge cities like Jeddah and Diriyah as well as lush oasis-like landscapes. At one point, flowers fill the lower screen as the smell of roses fills the air thanks to the pavilion’s scent partner, The Perfume Atelier.

Remarkably, the domed screens sat at the highest point of the sloping pavilion, seemingly unsupported from below. It took much more than the wave of a magic wand to make it happen. BMA built physical mock-ups of almost every area of the pavilion during its research and development phase. It also travelled to Kraftwerk’s headquarters in Austria and attended factory acceptance tests in China to verify that the bespoke equipment for the pavilion was up to scratch.

Cleverly, the chain of hidden speakers around the domed screens continued in the handrail alongside the escalator that led back down so that it subtly stopped guests from lingering too long. It wasn’t an accident. “The skill of the system designer is to interpret what the exhibit designer wants and then apply the technologies to achieve it,” explains Wickman.

No stone was left unturned and even the escalator down told the story of Saudi Arabia’s transformation. The escalator passed directly through a 370 square meter display created with 31 projectors, all positioned carefully to produce a continuous flowing image.

This time they showed future developments in Saudi Arabia like the Qiddiya resort which will soon be home to a ground-breaking theme park run by the Six Flags chain. Again, the audio was immersive thanks to speakers hidden in the handrail and 43 installed in the ceiling. They were obscured by 2,030 glistening crystals representing the timeframe for Saudi Arabia’s transformation. It reminded visitors that the best was yet to come in the country and the same was true in the pavilion.

The Main Event

Just when you thought you had seen it all you were met at the bottom with an image of a globe that seemed to be tens of meters in diameter. It was actually one of the world’s largest kaleidoscopes and was formed from a five meter wide projected image which was beamed on to an inflatable screen set between two pairs or mirrors.

The globe transformed into a sun, a moon and stars which all had a loose connection to Saudi Arabia as the designs were created by local artists. At the same time, images were beamed onto the floor in front of the kaleidoscope from 14 projectors which were fitted with with IR camera technology to make the scene seem interactive.

At one point the floor looked like it was made of ice which cracked when guests walked on it before melting into water causing every step to create ripples. Remarkably, that still wasn’t the end of the pavilion.

The finale came in the basement where there was a 5.5 meter cinema screen which played a tourist video about Saudi Arabia featuring John Travolta. Next door, up to 40 guests gathered around one of the world’s largest interactive projection tables. Shaped like a map of Saudi Arabia, it enabled them to bring up more than 1,000 pieces of data about the country.

To pull this off, 20 high resolution projectors fed by seven media servers were synchronised with each other and automatically aligned at the start of every day. This involved the system comparing an image of the perfect configuration to the one that it saw and adjusting any affected projectors accordingly.

Even after the last room, the pavilion still managed to break records. Guests streamed back outside and either went on to another pavilion or underneath Saudi Arabia’s outpost to dig deeper into the country. No expense was spared.

Next to a restaurant serving traditional Saudi Arabian dishes was a 90 square meter water curtain which was the world’s largest interactive water feature. It earned that accolade by using ultrafast solenoid valves to display different local words and symbols as if by magic when visitors entered them into touchscreens in front of it.

The majority of the hardware, image servers and controllers running the pavilion were located in racks in two main AV control rooms. There was also an overall control system, which allowed maintenance engineers to control, restart and check the various areas via a tablet.

The entire building was controlled by a Brainsalt media server which wasn’t just for playback but also for managing image warping, blending and auto alignment.

This delivered all the media, show control and synchronization and was partnered with a 160 channel Digital Audio system. It also incorporated its own tracking system which helped to manage the interactive floors in the kaleidoscope and plaza areas.

The effects in the pavilion were so astounding that it was common to see guests scratching their heads and asking each other how they were created. Although the AV and IT infrastructure was behind the scenes, there was no attempt to hide the technology as there often is in theme park attractions. That’s because theme parks aim to immerse guests in stories and make-believe worlds whereas the objective of an Expo pavilion is to make a splash.

“Normally a museum or exhibition is all about the story, and the techniques used to tell the story involve technology, and it shouldn’t dominate, it is just a tool,” explains Wickman. “An Expo is about celebration and selling – celebration of the country, selling of the country to the rest of the world. There is a theme, across the whole Expo but this is often loosely adhered to. Fundamentally it is about saying ‘look at us’…It is about a big sell and standing out compared to other countries.”

He adds that, in stark contrast to a theme park attraction, in an Expo pavilion, “without the AV there is no story. Everything is AV lead.”

It is no exaggeration to call the Saudi Arabia pavilion a wonder of the modern world. Not only could it be dropped directly into a Disney park like Epcot but it would even make a fitting central landmark. Indeed, it broke so much ground that it wouldn’t be surprising if it is a template for an attraction in the upcoming Disneyland Abu Dhabi park which Disney’s chief executive Bob Iger has said will be “the most advanced and interactive destination in our portfolio.”

There’s little doubt that the pavilion helped Saudi Arabia to secure its spot as the host of the 2030 Expo in its capital city Riyadh. In turn, this meant that the country was on a high going into Expo 2025, which is currently taking place in Osaka, Japan. This author hasn’t visited the Expo there so can’t confirm if the Saudia Arabia pavilion meets the high standards set by its predecessor. However, it is in safe hands under the leadership of Dr. Ghazi Faisal Binzagr.

Testimony to this, the pavilion announced on August 29 that it has welcomed more than two million visitors since the event began in April. The Saudi Arabia pavilion at Expo 2020 attracted more than double that number with 4.95 million visitors though the ethos of the two events is completely different.

Expo 2020 was designed to showcase Dubai to the world, which it did with flying colors, whereas Expo 2025 is more aimed at attracting local tourists to Osaka as internal travel in Japan is still recovering from the pandemic. So Saudi Arabia’s pavilion has cast such a powerful spell that it is helping to drive tourism on the other side of the world. That really is a happy ending.