UK Pavilion, Expo 2017 Astana, Kazakhstan

Client Creative Direction, including participation strategy, theme statement, design brief and procurement.

Inspired by the Astana 2017 Expo theme of ‘Future Energy’, the UK Pavilion explored the origins of energy, designed by Asif Khan.

From the beginnings of universe 13.8 billion years ago, to the emergence of the Sun, the Earth and of human ingenuity, the story of the UK Pavilion was that everything including ourselves are connected through energy. The visitor journey was a multi-sensory experience involving film, technology, sound and computer-generated animation delivered by an international creative team.

The Pavilion showed visitors that the UK is a country which fosters a culture of creative energy, innovation and global collaboration and that the UK is a global leader in innovation, through the ages and in the present.

At the heart of the UK pavilion was a stunning 60 metre panorama depicting a living, universal landscape generated entirely by computer. It captured the relationship between the Sun, the Earth and its climate in incredible detail through virtual day and night. At a stunning 40,000 pixels wide it was the largest project of its kind ever undertaken.

The panorama surrounded a striking centrepiece structure inspired by the architecture of yurts, representing the timeless connection between human civilisation and our environment. Its transparent spokes responded to human touch with illumination, which in turn influenced the landscape around it, gently altering its weather in reaction to visitor activity.

An original score by world-renowned musician, Brian Eno, unfolded in parallel with this journey. It took visitors from a single tone at the entrance and exit, and built to a continuous, richly layered composition, immersing people as they view the landscape.

 "Much of what you hear in this piece is not made by ‘instruments’ in the sense we normally think of them: mostly it’s software synthesizers (ie sequences of numbers) playing sounds I’ve devised - in many cases only for this purpose - often with the assistance of statistical algorithms which recombine my original choices in new ways."  Brian Eno

The visitor was then invited into a gallery space to discover innovations from the UK, showcased through an animated triptych of UK energy past, present and future against a backdrop of well-known landmarks and activity. 

The triptych, designed by Factory Fifteen, highlighted UK innovations and discoveries that have changed the way we live our lives and connect with others, transforming communities (steam locomotion), people (electromagnetic radiation), the world (turbojet engine), us (DNA), and everything (world wide web), before inspiring them to imagine a new future, fuelled by the properties of the advanced material, graphene, discovered by Nobel Prize winning UK scientists.

 Before exiting the visitor was welcomed into a special display on graphene – the UK’s most recent global innovation. A wonder material that is the strongest, thinnest and most permeable material known to man, whose potential is limitless. This gallery also hosted a series of pop-up displays throughout the period of the Expo.

The official languages of the UK Pavilion were English, Kazakh, Russian and Chinese.