Expo 2020 Dubai: Transitioning to the Future?

Expo 2020 Dubai: Transitioning to the Future?

During the past two years spent photographing Expo 2020 Dubai, I was often asked by friends what exactly it was. To align with its closure on the 31st of March, I would like to address that question from two angles. Most readers will be aware that the expo is part of a tradition dating back to the 19th century – a showcase for companies and countries, a tourist attraction, a testing ground for technical innovation. But it is also a collection of paradigm studies on opportunity, sustainability, and mobility, as well as a lucrative building project creating a new neighbourhood in the Emirate and a future means of dwelling. Perhaps this last frame of reference is the most interesting for it is what most distinguishes this expo from others.

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A bit of context

It’s odd that people didn’t know about Expo, given they’ve been going on around the world every five years for the past 171 years. 1851 marked the first one, which took place in London to promote technical innovations of the industrial revolution. They have grown a bit since then. At Expo 2020, 192 countries took part and 200,000 workers from around the world came together to make it a reality. And more than 30,000 businesses from 179 countries registered to do business there.

Dubai tourism leaves places like Barcelona and Venice in the dust. Roughly 10 million people travelled to Venice in a 6 month period in 2019 and 7 million to Barcelona. Dubai was already the seventh most visited city in the world in 2018, just behind Paris, with over 16 million annual visitors according to Rabia Yasmeen, Senior Analyst of Travel Euromonitor International. Moreover, Dubai was the top city for visitor spending, totalling 30 million in 2018. By comparison, visitor spending in Paris was 14 million that year. To date, Expo 2020 has had 19,009,065 visitors and 180 million visitors online – that’s in just six months – making it vastly more of a tourist attraction than the Ramblas.

These events have always been a kind of technology Olympics. Amazing inventions unveiled at previous World Expos include: “the X-ray machine, the typewriter…the first live television broadcast…IMAX movies, Heinz Tomato Ketchup and the ice cream cone.” This expo is no different, with each pavilion housing countless gadgets galore. Part of what made this possible was the Innovation Impact Grant Programme (IIGP) with 140 grantees from 76 countries securing funding, guidance and exposure. More than 11,000 applications have been received from 184 countries (96 per cent of all countries in the world). In addition, Expo offered the University Innovation Programme providing 46 teams of students in the UAE with grants of AED25,000-AED 50,000 each.

A lucrative or building project creating a new neighbourhood in the Emirates 

All of that is very well and good, but architectural innovation is perhaps what matters most here. Planners and designers have been tasked with the legacy of Expo, ensuring that 80% of all buildings will go on to be used after the six-month event has ended. The development will retain more than 260,000 sqm of GFA of LEED Gold and Platinum structures from Expo 2020 Dubai. These will be transitioned in phases into residential, commercial and cultural neighbourhoods in District 2020. The Dubai Exhibition Centre (DEC), designed by Woods Bagot offers 45,000 sqm of customisable space, housed in a 60,000 sqm site, with 14 multi-purpose halls, four suites and 24 meeting rooms. The building is so big I found it challenging to fit it into my widest lens.

The 4.38 square kilometres of the Expo site are divided into three main districts: Mobility, Opportunity and Sustainability, linked together by the Al Wasl Plaza. Each district features a thematic pavilion. 

Simon Fraser, Lead Architect at Hopkins Architects, Master planner and Principal Designer for the Thematic Districts says the following about the impetus for his design: “I have always felt there were three important aspects to all Expos; namely what character and contextual meaning can be expressed in the buildings and places and how can these be repurposed after the event and finally just as importantly, where can someone find a place of rest and respite from ‘museum fatigue’ after wandering around these pavilions“.

I was fortunate to receive the commission to photograph this project for Hopkins, and it was largely this task that has kept me returning. Hence, much of my sense of Expo – what it looks like, what it’s about – comes from Simon. So let’s continue with him a bit longer: “I felt it was appropriate that our Masterplan and buildings needed to have an Emirati character and a very flexible and adaptable loose fit architectural language. Looking back at the old Bastakia quarter near the creek in Dubai, it really is enjoyable to wander around the narrow streets and landscaped courtyard spaces that exist there – they have a fantastic human scale and character using consistent but repeated materials and details but all slightly differently expressed“.

Another key feature of the sustainability district is Terra, the sustainability pavilion designed by Grimshaw architects. The Pavilion’s canopy accommodates more than 6,000 sqm of ultra-efficient monocrystalline photovoltaic cells embedded in glass panels. The combination of the cell and the glass casing allows the building to harness solar energy while providing shade and daylighting to the visitors below. The experience in the courtyard is of being beneath a large shade tree with dappled light projecting onto the surfaces below. The form of the canopy works with the courtyard to direct cool air in, while simultaneously exhausting low-lying hot air through a chimney effect at the centre. The canopy also serves as a large collection area for stormwater and dew that replenishes the building’s water system.

I was commissioned to photograph this pavilion together with some of the country pavilions included in the following series of images which will hopefully give a broader sense of what Expo Dubai was like. Singapore, Netherlands and Finland were my favourites.

Concerns

After asking what the expo was about, there were an oft-repeated set of concerns voiced by the people I spoke with. Sustainability was one of these. Perhaps the most sustainable use of resources would be to build nothing at all. Another option is to build for an event like this so it will last for years beyond the event itself. To quote Simon from Hopkins again, “I also feel one of the most sustainable things you can do is allow buildings to be flexible and adaptable – our ideas focused on this so that any pavilion could be changed with the minimum possible conversion work”. Best practices take on crucial importance to a project of this scale. In addition to building for legacy, Pavilions and districts all met the LEED Gold standard, the second-highest of the four tiers in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design system. As stated, many of the buildings have served as research platforms for sustainable ways of building. Furthermore, Expo provided the opportunity for a significant expansion of the Dubai Metro. Having used it each day to get on-site once the expo was opened, I can attest both to its popularity (almost sardine-like at times) and the comfort and ease of using it. Of all methods tried, the metro was by far the best way to travel to and from Dubai Expo, I found.

Another common concern was human rights. What happens in countries run by forms of governance other than western liberal democracies? Having visited Expo repeatedly during its construction, I was able to see first-hand what conditions were like there. I can state that inductions were thorough and clearly put forth (I went through several in order to be granted site access on separate occasions) and that the project was organised like nothing I have ever seen before. Armies of workers split into hundreds of crews, each with colour-coded hard-hats, moved about the large, dusty complex building site speaking dozens of languages that reflected the organisational genius of the operation. I was literally in awe walking through these industrious masses with my camera and tripod. Not only at the complexity of the operation but also because I was on the verge of fainting in the heat half the time and not nearly as hard at work as they were. Fortunately, there was no work for anyone during the hottest hours of the day and water was provided everywhere I went. That said, it was damned hard work. Crews dealt with heat, dust, noise and stress for years on end in order to realise this project. Every building site is something of a battlefield of conflicting interests and logistical nightmares. But this was both the largest and the most organised battle I have witnessed. Was it a pleasant place to be? No. It was brutally hard. But it could have been much worse and merit goes both to the long-suffering organisers in metal-coloured headquarters (reminiscent of police stations in Dubai) and the sweaty, smelly, dusty and resilient people who built it. 

Parity is an issue in the industry in general, but it appears to be no more so in the Emirates than in the West. Again, these are just personal impressions I am sharing, but having visited most architecture studios there I can attest that lots of female architects work in each. Dress ranged from Western to traditional Emirati, with many other types welcomed due to the fact that the UAE is such a crossroads and melting pot. Most of the communications people in those offices are female, and most of the directors are male is not unique to the region. Only Mexico city stands out in my experience of photographing architecture studios with several owned and run by women.

As for ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’, there is little to say. PR slogans always have that tinnie, insincere, business jargon ring to them – did a human write this or a bot? They are like public art, offending and satisfying no one. They are the equivalent of the blue sky photos architectural photographers are asked to produce. Bland, easy to digest, clear. It goes without saying that minds were connected to make this event happen and that minds connected upon its launch. Box ticked. And the building is always in a sense creating the future. Perhaps that’s why it’s a gerund, with the present moving ever forward. To show they are interested in the legacy as a study for how to do things better moving forward, and serious about a shift from oil to renewables, why not call it ‘Transitioning to the future’ and connect it to a series of pledges? But the tagline is not really the point. The point is, was it any good? And by what standard? With a preference for most things adaptive reuse, historical or in a modern but locally contextual idiom, I was not disposed to be a fan. This was a hard sell. But over the course of the two years spent visiting Dubai Expo, my admiration grew for the sheer accomplishment it represented. And some of the architecture is quite lovely. The thematic districts really are a modern version of the old city – in many ways a better one. The play of shadow and light from the shade structures, the use of water to cool and soothe together with birdsong (they love it there) are nothing short of beautiful. It’s very much an oasis in the desert.

Terra and Alif are mesmerising. Hopefully, they will inspire the creation of many other buildings in a similar spirit. I couldn’t get enough of them and be in awe of what a feat each was, how fit for purpose, how well made, how they changed with the light.  And perhaps one-day country pavilions will emulate the elegance of Mies van der Rohe’s seminal (for all things except contemporary pavilions it would seem) pavilion. The current trend is ‘Learning from Las Vegas’ – some really rather painful to look at with nothing but mesmerising screens inside. But they do have good visitor numbers in Vegas. How is one to improve them in light of that measurement? 

All facts provided by Expo 2020 Dubai unless otherwise indicated.