The immersive displays at The World Expo Dubai speak to technology, innovation, nature and the environment. Thanks to Cactus, an innovative award-winning design studio, the Brazilian Pavilion stands as an example of these water-cooler topics.
The exhibit aims to transport visitors into scenes of Brazil through the use of larger-than-life visual projections. Encompassing 24,800 square feet of space, the enclosure is covered in a custom-designed, 1002 HT projectable fabric built to withstand the extremes of the Dubai desert.
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The Brazilian Pavilion’s high-tensile strength keeps visitors protected and comfortable, even in the face of sandstorms, windstorms and extreme desert heat. On the other hand, it’s translucent enough to project images inside and outside the enclosure.
The nature of the fabric acts as a projection screen for 60,000 square feet of wall, floor and ceiling to be covered in illustrations of the Brazilian landscape. Guests are immersed into a sensory experience combined of technology and design that celebrates the culture and beauty of Brazil. The digital reproduction of rainforests, cities, canyons, animals, beaches and lush hillsides aims to remove the visitor from the desert and engage them in locations over 7,300 miles away.
The experience requires no transport emissions from travel, wait lines at the airport or pollution from tourists in sensitive areas of Brazil. Instead, it relies on more than 140 projectors to spin up the fully immersive 360 degree environment in a thought-provoking installation that’s both futuristic in design and current in content. The exhibit is open now until the close of The World Expo on March 31, 2022.
“We want the world to see and feel the beauty and intricacies of the country we call home,” explained Marcelo Pontes, head of architecture for Cactus. “The process of achieving seamless UX requires good design at its core. There were many technical roadblocks, including regional weather, sand and heat that made this project more difficult than anything else we have taken on before. Unlike traditional immersive experiences, which only focus on projection mapping inside spaces, we were designing for the entire exterior of the exhibit as well.”
Photography by Joana Franca and Leonardo Finotti
