UAE Pavilion wins best exterior design award

In another landmark achievement at the world expos, the UAE Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015 has won the best exterior design award, the EXHIBITOR magazine has announced.

Announcing the Expo 2015 Award winners, the magazine also gave the National Media Council (NMC), organiser of the pavilion, an Honourable Mention. Germany won the Best Pavilion award.

For almost 30 years, EXHIBITOR magazine has brought the world's most prestigious exhibit-design competition, honouring the crème de la crème of trade show exhibits. Along the same lines, in 2010 and 2012, EXHIBITOR honoured some of the most impressive temporary experiential structures the world has ever seen with its Expo Awards competitions in Shanghai, and Yeosu, South Korea, respectively.

Continuing that tradition, EXHIBITOR magazine launched its Expo 2015 Awards five months ago, and is finally ready to announce the winners and honourable mentions in the competition's 11 categories.

The purpose of this competition is to honour the most impressive work from Expo 2015 in Milan (aka Expo Milano) and to spotlight some of the incredible pavilions there, all brimming with inspiration for exhibit and event professionals. The competition netted a record number of entries from more than three dozen pavilions, representing countries from Spain to Switzerland, Germany to Japan, Estonia to Azerbaijan, Mexico to Malaysia, and many more.

"The Expo 2015 Award winners and honourable mentions represent some of the world's best examples of how design, technology, presentation and storytelling come together to create immersive experiences and effectively communicate compelling messages," said Travis Stanton, editor of EXHIBITOR magazine. "These examples will hopefully inform and inspire today's exhibit and event professionals along with the next generation of face-to-face marketers. Because whether you're creating an immense international pavilion or a small 10-by-10-foot exhibit, it's often about making a lasting impression, and the work on display in Milan does that in truly monumental and memorable ways."

For the third consecutive Expo, Germany's Pavilion took top honours for Best Pavilion, followed by Austria and the United Arab Emirates which claimed honourable mentions in that category. In total, 23 different pavilions received recognition in this year's competition, with the pavilions from Germany, Austria, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Mexico, and Kuwait earning high marks in multiple categories.

After all, the winners - according to our judges, our readers, and our team of writers and editors, are among the best the world (well, the World's Expo, at least) has to offer, the magazine added.

Since the first Great Fair of 1851, World Expos have developed into one of the largest and most enduring global events.

Organised by Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) and lasting six months, World Expos attract millions of visitors who explore and discover pavilions, exhibits and cultural events staged by hundreds of participants including states, international organisations and corporations. Most participants build their own pavilions on sites provided by the host country.

The UAE has made a strong mark at each Expo in which it has participated. It was among the top ten pavilions at EXPO 2000 in Hannover. It was awarded a gold medal at EXPO Zaragoza 2008, won a popular vote among the general public at the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010 (and topped an academic study conducted by staff from UCLA who looked at public diplomacy criteria); and received a silver medal at the International Expo in Yeosu in 2012.

For Expo Milano 2015, the UAE's National Media Council assembled a world-class team to deliver an unforgettable pavilion experience, not only producing a building design that wows visitors but also satisfies the requirement for our pavilion to be demountable and re-built in the UAE. Architects, Foster + Partners, took their inspiration from the evocative landscape and sustainable traditional architecture of the UAE. This sustainability ethos is also reflected in Masdar City, the UAE s future energy complex, and it is in Masdar s sinuous narrow streets and fluid open spaces, intended as self-shaded pedestrian routes in a car-free city, that the UAE Pavilion will finally come to rest when Expo 2015 closes.

The building creates excitement and anticipation, but what really matters is what is inside - a seamless, holistic and enchanting encounter with the UAE and its people.

Every World Expo has a theme that must be of central concern to all humanity . For Expo Milano 2015 this is: Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life .

The UAE s story embraces the Expo 2015 theme of food, nutrition and sustainability in all its exciting and challenging facets, using our own experiences of living in a dynamic country with a rapidly increasing population, a shortage of arable land, and where water is now more important than oil. It explores the interplay between land, energy and water in producing sufficient, safe food, as well as age-old traditional Emirati values of sustainability and sharing that are motivating our search for innovative solutions.

Expo Milano 2015 is the Universal Exhibition that Milan, Italy, is hosting from May 1 to October 31, 2015. Over this six-month period, Milan becomes a global showcase where more than 150 participating countries show the best of their technology that offers a concrete answer to a vital need: being able to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone, while respecting the Planet and its equilibrium. In addition to the exhibitor nations, the Expo also involves international organisations, and expects to welcome over 20 million visitors to its 1.1 million square meters of exhibition area.

A platform for the exchange of ideas and shared solutions on the theme of food, stimulating each country s creativity and promoting innovation for a sustainable future, Expo 2015 gives everyone the opportunity to find out about, and taste, the world s best dishes, while discovering the best of the agri-food and gastronomic traditions of each of the exhibitor countries.
Source: WAM