2020 Expo Dubai in six pavilions

Showing quite an unprecedented attitude in terms of space layout (not in terms of shapes, as the whole Expo is quite full of cones) the structure designed by Temperaturas Extremas combines two different spatial solutions that act as sustainable systems for climate control: the conic rooves above the exterior piazzas extracting the air upwards, and the choice to locate the largest part of the exhibition underground. The experience design, curated by External Reference and onionlab, develops the core subject (“Intelligence for  Life”) through a twofold approach: analog installations at the entrance level and — after reaching the lower level by walking around Daniel Canogar’s Dinamo — the  Bosque de la Inteligencia (Intelligence Forest). There, a subterranean forest, 3D-printed from a mineral combining bioplastic polymers with the pure.tech patent, captures and mineralizes some of the main greenhouse gases and pollutants in the atmosphere with no need for natural lighting, while showing us the Spanish way to the accomplishment of the 2030 sustainability goals, and questioning us about our more or less sustainable lifestyle choices in front of an interactive tree. Photo: Giovanni Comoglio

Photo: Giovanni Comoglio

Photo: Adrià Goula

Photo: Aleix Fernandez

Switzerland has been of those Expo participants to choose a landscape-centered narration — no doubt they have a head start in this field — and to entrust this narration to the pavilion as an architectural device, through a both simple and spectacular solution.
A mirrored perspective funnel involves the public in an process of identification, suddenly expanding in a hike on a sea of clouds (shamelessly evocating Caspar David Friedrich). Once hooked in such experience, taking part to the narration comes quite spontaneously, in a both environmental and human landscape telling stories of research innovations for a sustainable present. Photo: Jon Wallis

Photo: Jon Wallis

Photo: Jon Wallis

V8 Architects has chosen to move from the gap between context and brief (the water-food-energy nexus vs. the desert all around) to develop a real harvesting machine, extracting water from the air through a process alimented by organic solar skylights, where mushrooms and edible plants are grown on both the interior and exterior surface of a cone – again. A biotope is created, to be visited through a multisensorial ritual including a final rain, as Dutch in the environment it creates as it is in terms of construction choices: the pavilion is realized with civil engineering materials — large steel corrugated sheets and pipes — well known in Dutch landscape building tradition, and ready to be returned to the local market by the  end of Expo, according to circular economy principles. Photo: Giovanni Comoglio

Photo: Jeroen Musch

Photo: Jeroen Musch

Photo: Jeroen Musch

© V8 Architects

The Campus Germany concept comes from the choice to develop the German pavilion as a balanced combination of experience, lab-approach and research data display.
A proper “course of study” is in fact developed by facts and fiction GmbH inside the structure conceived by LAVA Architects — monitored piece by piece in its post-Expo destination through a dedicated app — ascending around the central atrium in a sequence of  suspended thematic cubes. Through an innovative interactive education system, premiering at Expo, the German answers to the complexity of Anthropocene is narrated, involving innovations in energy supply, mobility, future of cities and valorization of biodiversity. The final achievement is represented by a real and by all means spectacular graduation show. Photo: German Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai

Photo: German Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai

Photo: Giovanni Comoglio

Photo: German Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai

Photo: German Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai

The home to this year’s host, and the real center of  the Expo international galaxy, this 15000 square meter structure speaks a powerful language, inspired to “a falcon in flight, symbolic to the country, rooted in UAE’s local rich history and cultural heritage” as told by its author, Santiago Calatrava.
The gigantic building, full of symbols, stretches its 28 orientable “wings” way beyond the exhibition surface, determining the surrounding landscape made of the sands and the carpets of the waiting area, as well as of the bridges crossing the shady sunken gardens, with water pools and local plants providing some relief from the outside ferocious heat.
A poignant narration of the history of the country characterizes the interiors, where the public is lead across — real — dunes towards a vaulted theater; here, the gallery is lifted up during a projection, and people is finally left to the experience of the large central hall, illuminated by the Expo-logo-shaped Oculus skylight. Courtesy: Santiago Calatrava

Photo: Oliver Schuh + Barbara Burg

Photo: Giovanni Comoglio

Photo: Giovanni Comoglio

Photo: Giovanni Comoglio

Photo: Oliver Schuh + Barbara Burg

The only non-national pavilion in this selection, Mission Possible is also the only thematic pavilion to give proof of a higher sensitivity towards the urban system it is part of. It shows in the powerful perspective composition it creates with Asif Khan’s monumental gate, and it gets confirmation in the space layout design, a sequence of piazzas — chosen as fundamental units of a universal language of space —  shaded by a system of cantilevered trusses, echoing radical utopias and filtering the desert light as textile clouds. The structure, conceived by the spanish-kuwaitian firm AGi architects, is the home base to the Opportunity district, the place where Expo wants to provide a narration — through 3 thematic paths, water, food and energy — of small-scale, low-cost actions capable of generating larger progress towards the accomplishment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) defined in 2015 by the United Nations; for this reason, the pavilion will also serve as the UNHub, an epicenter of SDG-related activities and events promoted by the UN. Photo: Expo 2020 Dubai

Photo: Giovanni Comoglio

Photo: Expo 2020  Dubai

Photo: Expo 2020  Dubai