Alif – The Mobility Pavilion will offer a journey through time and space at Expo 2020. Expo 2020 Dubai has unveiled details of the eye-catching visitor experience at Alif – The Mobility Pavilion, which will take guests on a journey across time and space to explore how people, commodities, ideas, and data are interacting in ever more sophisticated ways. The Mobility Pavilion, which brings the narrative of global mobility to life in immersive and inspirational ways, highlights the UAE’s and the Arab world’s vital role in furthering human development, in a journey that spans ancient exploration to the Emirates Mission to Mars and beyond.
The tourist journey begins 4,500 years ago at Saruq Al Hadid, a hamlet in the Dubai desert with significant ties to the Gulf, the Levant, and West Asia, demonstrating the region’s long-term strategic importance. After that, visitors are allowed to board the world’s largest elevating platform, which takes them to Baghdad’s House of Wisdom in the ninth century.
Following that, they’ll come face to face with nine-metre-tall photo-realistic figures from the Golden Age of Arab Civilisation, including ancient navigator IbnMajid and famed explorer Ibn Battuta, whose ideas helped propel global mobility forward for centuries. The stories of these historical giants are utilised to explore the concept of mobility, its power, and far-reaching effect, as well as to showcase Arab-inspired technologies that have accelerated human exploration and movement.
The experience then jumps forward in time to the twenty-first century, where visitors will be immersed in a virtual environment awash in data before entering the city of the future, where they will be offered a taste of how mobility may change in the years and decades ahead.
The story of Dubai, and the role the emirate and the UAE have historically played in connecting people on a global scale, is inextricably related to the visitor experience. Visitors will be shown the UAE’s tremendous accomplishments over the last 50 years, particularly in mobility-related industries such as aviation, logistics, and smart cities, as well as the UAE’s space programme and the Hope Mission to Mars.
Marjan Faraidooni, Chief Experience Officer, Expo 2020 Dubai, said: “Representing our desire to explore and progress, Alif – The Mobility Pavilion will take visitors on a journey of discovery, exploring new horizons and discovering how making connections, together with developing new technologies, is the basis for human progress.
“We are proud that this must-see pavilion celebrates the Arab world as a leading light in mobility across the ages, changing perceptions of what this region has achieved. We hope that visitors, especially young Arabs, will leave this experience inspired – realising that anything is possible, motivated to make a difference in our world and looking with optimism to a future when we connect and work together on a global scale.”
Alif – The Mobility Pavilion, one of Expo 2020’s distinctive attractions, was made possible by the efforts of local and international collaborators. For the space component, the UAE Space Agency and Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center supplied knowledge and content. MET Studio, a global experience design firm, Weta Workshop, a well-known New Zealand film and television studio, and Magnopus, an Academy Award-winning Los Angeles-based experience firm, have all collaborated with Expo 2020 to develop the pavilion’s inspirational visitor experience.
Foster + Partners, an award-winning British architectural design and engineering team, created the pavilion. Its ribbed and curving design was inspired by chrome fenders and aircraft wings, and its highly polished stainless-steel cladding reflects movement from the surrounding areas.
The pavilion and its grounds include a 330-meter track that is partially underground and partly open-air, as well as an amphitheatre and second stage, as well as a plaza around the building that will host mobility-related performances, events, symposiums, and demos.
The Mobility Pavilion, Alif, is one of three Thematic Pavilions exploring Expo 2020’s core subthemes of Opportunity, Mobility, and Sustainability. Terra – The Sustainability Pavilion will open to the public in January 2021, while Mission Possible – The Opportunity Pavilion will open this week.
Expo 2020, one of the first global mega-events since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, runs from October 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022, and invites visitors from all over the world to participate in the creation of a new world through a six-month journey of human creativity, innovation, progress, and culture.
