The 10 most beautiful pavilions of Expo 2020 in Dubai From the Italian one of Carlo Ratti to the monumental waterfalls of the WET Water Feature
Dubai's Expo 2020, which opened in early October, has concentrated the best of architecture and design from around the world. After the interruption of preparations last year due to the lockdown, the universal exhibition was opened with a ceremony last September 30 that saw the public intervention of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktum and an international concert that included Andrea Bocelli, Andra Day and the Chinese pianist Lang Lang, among others. To comply with the four-year cadence, the year of the event remained 2020 and was not updated. Spread over an area of 438 hectares, just under 4 and a half square kilometers, between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the general project was signed by the American studio HOK and has a central square called Al Wasl from which three macro-areas each dedicated to the three themes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability branch off. In addition to the pavilions of each country, there are about twenty of them installed by national organizations, partners of the Expo itself and dedicated to special projects.
The pavilions are many and beautiful – but for those who do not have time to look at them one by one, nss magazine has prepared a list of the 10 most beautiful pavilions of Expo 2020 in Dubai.
1. The Saudi Arabia Pavilion by Boris Micka Associates
The Dutch pavilion is one of the most spectacular because it brings to fruition the idea of self-sustenance that underlies many of the Expo's ideas of sustainable architecture. The name of the pavilion is Biotope and it has an integrated system for water collection, cultivation and creation of clean energy. Its technology extracts moisture from the desert air and uses it to irrigate a conical-shaped vertical garden used to grow edible plants and even mushrooms, thanks to its ability to create an indoor microclimate. The solar panels are the main source of energy of the structure while the water collected thanks to the technology of Sun Glacier falls inside the cone like a waterfall even reaching 800 liters per day.
Bonus: WET Design's Water Feature
The Water Feature is not even a pavilion itself, yet it is the most visible monumental installation of the entire Expo and is located at its center, in the Al Wasl Plaza. The Water Feature is also an impressive and beautiful work, a sort of circular arena with curved walls thirteen meters high from the top of which rhythmic waterfalls of water fall during the day that pour towards the ground but which, at the height of visitors, disappear between the holes of the rock without a trace. At night the show is repeated, only that the waves rise to the top instead of descending defying the laws of physics. At the center of the installation then there is a fiery circle whose flames burn changing colors and shades. The result was obtained by the Californian studio WET Design who organized the water choreography using supercomputers and coordinating with Ramin Djawadi, the composer of the Game of Thrones soundtrack, for the musical accompaniment of the show.
