The Architecture of a World's Fair: Designing the Expo 2020 Dubai Ceremonies
Patrick Larsen's production design for the Expo 2020 Dubai opening and closing ceremonies — staged beneath the 130-metre Al Wasl dome, one of the largest 360° projection surfaces ever built.
The opening and closing ceremonies of Expo 2020 Dubai, staged beneath the Al Wasl dome. Studio Bound's portfolio credits Patrick Larsen as production designer.
Al Wasl Plaza sits at the centre of Expo 2020 Dubai. The dome above it is about 130 metres across and 67 high — a trellis of steel that also happens to be one of the largest 360° projection surfaces ever built. I was production designer on the opening ceremony in October 2021 and the closing in March 2022.
Early stage-design boards — the in-the-round performance disc plotted against the dome footprint, performer routes drawn straight onto the plan. Production design by Studio Bound.
Designing inside a building
Usually the set is the thing the audience looks at. Here the building was. My job was to work at the scale of the building itself. FiveCurrents produced, with Scott Givens leading. Franco Dragone was on artistic direction, Jared Sweet on creative.
Every choice had to read two ways at once — for the people in the plaza, and for cameras pointed up into a 360° screen. You don't design those frames separately. They have to be one decision.
Design boards for the Expo Ring — sequence storyboard, centre-lift section and 3D model worked out in parallel so the kinetic ring could land its cues inside a 130-metre architectural landmark. Production design by Studio Bound.The signature moment in performance — the illuminated ring suspended above the central mound as Hope is revealed in the garden, dome dressed in deep blue projection. Production design by Studio Bound.
The numbers
About a thousand performers. Three thousand or so lighting fixtures. Around thirteen hundred costumes. The dome wrapped in projection.
On a job this size, I'm not drawing one beautiful image. I'm giving a very large moving machine a single coherent world to live inside, segment to segment, without losing the thread.
A performer climbs a ladder toward a luminous sphere suspended inside Al Wasl — a single figure used to scale a 67-metre-high room. Production design by Studio Bound.The plaza dressed as a jewelled garden — a crystal tree at the centre, the dome above painted in projected flora. Production design by Studio Bound.The golden bloom — petals opening on the central disc with a soloist at its heart, Al Wasl carrying the moment for both the live audience and the broadcast camera. Production design by Studio Bound.
Making a 130m room hold one moment
The hardest beats were the small ones. A single soloist under the dome. One veiled performer with a conch shell at the closing. The whole 67-metre room focused down to one figure.
You can't get there with size alone. You have to give the room somewhere quiet to go.
Closing Ceremony, March 2022 — the dome redrawn in red, the Expo Ring returning overhead to bracket the six months in between with a single piece of architecture. Production design by Studio Bound.Aerial of the Closing Ceremony — a ring of national flags arranged on the plaza floor, the ceremony composed for the camera looking straight down as much as for the eye looking up. Production design by Studio Bound.
What it set up
Expo set the tone for a lot of the Gulf work that came after. It's the clearest answer I have to what a production designer does at the top end of live work. You design the room a once-in-a-generation moment happens inside.
The closing solo — a single veiled performer with a conch shell against a wash of violet light. The whole 130-metre room, in the end, focused down to one figure. Production design by Studio Bound.
