Emirates Pavillion Expo 2020 Dubai
Territory Studio - 2020
Role - Animation, Lookdev, R&D
Territory Studio designed and delivered the bespoke digital content and software programming for Emirates’ flagship pavilion at Dubai World Expo 2020, where we brought all of our combined expertise in movies, gaming and experiential to bear, teleporting audiences into the world of tomorrow.
Located on a purpose-built, 438 hectare site, Expo finally closed its doors in March 2022, having welcomed over 24 million visitors in just six months, from 178 countries world-wide. The installations spoke to a wide range of speculative topics – from aircraft design and experimental materials, to fuel innovations and seamless travel. To ensure the validity of our narratives and the viability of our designs, we undertook extensive research, including a series of workshops on the fundamental principles of flight.
The Pavillion
The Experience
The installations spoke to a wide range of speculative topics – from aircraft design and experimental materials, to fuel innovations and seamless travel. To ensure the validity of our narratives and the viability of our designs, we undertook extensive research, including a series of workshops on the fundamental principles of flight – and then subjected the content to rigorous and repeated fact-checking by the aviation expert Jonathan Howes.
The Arrival Tunnel
Upon arrival, visitors travelled through an immersive portal, comprising a huge bank of curved LEDs, which set the scene for the experience within. An infinitely looping animation – rendered for both day and night-time states, featured custom built aircraft cruising through a dynamic cloudscape, to emulate a futuristic windowless fuselage.
Science of Flight
A Pepper’s Ghost, housing a stunning LG Ultra Stretch screen, provided the perfect canvas for our holographic aircraft, which was augmented with deep-dive graphics and text, to prime visitors on the physics of flight.
Cleaner Skies
The Cleaner Skies installation is an immersive experience that demonstrates how future innovations are directly linked to some of the world’s biggest challenges: sustainability, population growth and technological advancements. Visitors will also be able to challenge each other in an interactive quiz about aviation technologies being developed to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.
Design Your Perfect Aircraft
A sophisticated and wholly bespoke touch screen configurator, which allowed users to build, customise and fly their own plane. We created a fleet of 20 original concept aircraft, underpinned by extensive research, which were then fully rendered in 3D. Visitors were able to select from a range of different models, fuels and wing types before designing their own liveries and finally taking their unique creations on a test flight.
Thrust & Propulsion
State-of-the-art Ghost OLED touch screens and a huge prop engine formed the centrepiece of this captivating installation that allowed visitors to delve into the fuels of the future through a combination of fully navigable, holographic 360° models, pop-up graphics and content-rich microstories about each part of an engine build and it’s technology.
Future Lab
An arresting combination of robotics and immersive digital content, demonstrating leading-edge innovations that will make aircraft lighter, faster and stronger – from biomimetics and self-healing materials, to generative design. This installation featured an array of robot controlled experiments within a futuristic lab setting, augmented with screen content – all of which was initiated by the user, requiring precise choreography, sequencing and testing upfront.
Airport of the Future
An immersive journey through the airport of the future, allowing audiences to discover first-hand how smart technology, architecture and design will transform the entire passenger experience, incorporating facial scanning, interactives, cut-scenes and dynamic fly-throughs.
Experience your tomorrow
A multi-sensory VR experience, which took visitors aboard a virtual flight in the cabin of the future. Transitioning from the real world into the imaginary realm, a haptic interface enabled users to explore a suite of inflight features designed to enhance passenger experience and wellbeing, including – entertainment and communications, biometric analysis, windowless fuselage with alternate vistas and a fully immersive sound shroud.
Credits:
Territory Studio
Creative Lead – Clayton Welham + Ambrogio Bergamaschi
Creative Technology Lead - Paul Boulding
Production Team – Sue Dhaliwal + André Espinet + Amy Smith
Resourcing - Aleksandra Kazmierczak + Arran Adam
Creative Partners- Creative Technology London - Pulse Group
Graphic Design - James Woods
3D Artists and Motion Designers - João Lucas + Alex Blomeley + Ambrogio Bergamaschi + James Mathias + Chris Shone + Jacob Wrigley + Alessandro Rusthigi + Edoardo Taloni
3D Modelling - Brett Lewis + Alex Blomeley
2D Type Animation - Chris Shone
Unreal Engine Artists - Rick Hartley + Dean Clarke + Kenneth Maclean
Script Writing - Alex Osman
Aviation Expert - Jonathan Howes