At Weta Workshop I had the privelage of designing some of the exhibitions for the Dubai World Expo Mobility Pavilion, The Mobility Pavilion tells the story of mobility that would also connect with visitors on an emotional level. Starring three nine-metre-tall hyper-realistic sculptures at the heart of its experience, Alif: The Mobility Pavilion tells the story of human mobility throughout the ages.

Wētā Workshop crafted 11 magnificent installations throughout Alif: The Mobility Pavilion. They included figures from moments in the golden age of Arab Civilisation, whose innovations helped navigate the world and paved the way for the technology we use today, through to people from the 21st century; from ancient navigator Ibn Majid, who was born in what is present-day The United Arab Emirates, to the space explorers pushing the limits of mobility in the modern era.

The Giants

The * ahem * biggest project I worked on for the Expo was the giants, a massive 9 meter tall exhibition featuring lifelike representations of three famous figures from moments in the golden age of Arab Civilisation, whose innovations helped navigate the world and paved the way for the technology we use today.

Starting with 3D scans of actors sitting around the table we made enormous “birdcage” skeletons of each giant and welded together aluminium structures around stage truss. We then sculpted the faces and hands and clad the giants in costumes to fit the scale. The giants’ costumes weigh 995kg in materials (around 330kg per giant) while the total structural form of the giants was comprised of 125 parts. The beards took two weeks to create by two artists and required roughly 15,000 holes. Entire faces took four weeks for two to three artists to complete. The elements took one year to build, four months to ship and three months to assemble in Dubai

Forced Perspective Baghdad

Weta approached me with the challenge of designing a small exhibition to introduce the giants by providing a setting - the old city of Baghdad circa 1000AD around the time of what we know in the western world as the Temple of Wonder. The brief was to make it appear that our character Al Bakri was looking out his window across the mile-wide city of Baghdad focused on the Temple of Wonder at night - using only a 6m wide by 3m space.

I designed the old city of Baghdad as it would have appeared in 1000AD, using classical abbasid architecture with flairs of muslim decorative elements and transformed the entire city using forced perspective techniques to make the city appear far larger from the viewer’s vantage point. The whole city was 3D printed and dressed and with some tricky lighting and old stage techniques the illusion was complete and the space was transformed into a magical ancient city at night time

History of Mobility Bas Relief

Surrounding the giants at the exhition we created an 84 meter long bas relief, one of the largest bas reliefs in the world depicting the evolution of humans through the lens of mobility, crafting a narrative spanning centuries, cultures and technology. The challenge was to take a massive and complex subject like mobility and create something that would be memorable and evoke an emotional connection with guests

Featuring 48 individual panels hung from the ceiling, these bas reliefs made from foam and polystyrene were styled to look like stone carvings in the temples of old. They depict humans from the ages of banding togetherer as wanderes and nomads, to the technologies of horse-drawn carriages and ships on the ocean all the way to space-faring astronauts exploring the cosmos.