Six months. 200 pavilions. 192 countries represented.

The rescheduled  Dubai Expo 2020 promised an excellent adventure through the most innovative and sophisticated temporary structure design from the world’s leading architects and creators of communications technology.

It did not disappoint.

Visiting Expo 2020 gives an insight into other countries’ views of the world and shows how they are preparing for the future.

“We have wanted to visit the world expo for years”, but it always coincides with Imagine’s busiest season. Obviously, the last two years have had a lasting impact on many events and so we found ourselves in a position to go together as a team!

It wasn’t plain sailing though. We had to change the dates once due to one of our party testing positive for COVID, which was followed by a nail-biting run-up to the rescheduled dates as another team member tested positive just over a week before we were due to leave!

Luckily, the tests came back negative a couple of days before leaving. It was a rollercoaster, to say the least.

Upon arrival, we were blown away. The whole place was a joy to look at.

“We had planned three days for the experience but the reality of visiting all the pavilions was not feasible. 10 days on-site would have been better” although really, you could spend months exploring all this event had to offer. 

The entire ecosystem of pavilions, transport and customer engagement was outstanding and showcased such amazing innovation.

Our visit to Expo 2020 was an exciting and inspirational experience of the multitude of design and delivery of cultural influences and solutions to world climate and future global changes.

“The pavilions we were able to visit were inspirational not only from the messages they delivered but the amazing and innovative means by which they delivered them.”

A few of the team’s highlights from our experience included Columbia’s Pavillion for it’s striking simplicity, Pakistan’s lively and vibrant production, and New Zealand’s cuisine and beautiful restaurant setting.

“We were impressed with the engineered architecture” including the UAE falcon’s head, AI Wasl Dome and the experiential journey through the Sustainability Pavillion.

The Switzerland Pavilion created the incredibly immersive experience of experiencing rain indoors, with a mirrored reflection of people holding umbrellas outside. 

Another was Singapore’s contribution. Using the theme of Nature, Nurture, Future, they successfully conveyed the story of their country’s incredible changing infrastructure, and visions for the future by designing an indoor rainforest. 

“We LOVED the immersive LED bowl in the Saudi Arabian Pavillion too”, the list goes on and on and we barely scratched the surface with what we were able to visit in three days.

A final personal highlight has to be the robots found all over the expo that you could interact with and ask for information from.

It was a truly inspirational and magical experience, the organisers have created a fabulously entertaining and excellently organised production, “we would definitely recommend attending the next World Expo, we’ll be back in Osaka, Japan 2025”

– Peter & the team at Imagine.