In its last edition, Architectural Digest magazine has picked Iran pavilion as one of the eight most architecturally significant pavilions of Expo 2020 Dubai.
Inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, the famed collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled during the Islamic Golden Age and also a seminal piece of literature in Persian culture, Iran’s pavilion, designed by Iranian architectural firm Shift Process Practice, consists of several spatial pockets in a field instead of a monolithic building, each functioning as an agent to provide a part of Iran’s contemporary history, the magazine wrote.
Each structural pocket consists of a blue box that is then wrapped in a curtain of bronze-colored beads—a metaphor telling of the contrast between the heavens and the earth.
Rather than a solid structure, Iran’s pavilion is a rhizomatic network of connections offering different narratives of contemporary Iranian history. Yet the narrative is ambiguous, in some ways like the tumultuous history of the country itself.
It is contingent upon the specific path the visitor decides to take that will reflect its own version of Iran’s modern-day history. Reflective of the country’s unfolding narrative is the work of Iranian artist Aref Montazeri that will be on view in one of the boxes.
His work, which uses the medium of mirrors and distorts their reflection through his sculptural forms, is currently on view in Leila Heller Gallery in Dubai.
Surpassing the myriad of challenges posed by the coronavirus, at long last the greatly anticipated Expo 2020, the universal exposition hosted by Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, is slated to open to the public on October 1, 2021—just under one year later than its originally scheduled opening date of October 20, 2020.
Expo 2020—the most recent world Expo was hosted by Milan in 2015—is dedicated to the theme of “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future,” emphasizing the importance of generating sustainable solutions to the globe’s current slew of environmental woes.
Expo 2020 proposes cross-cultural collaboration as a means to tackle the world’s problems and move into the next stage of existence where technology, sustainability, craft, and cultural heritage hold hands.
To that end, Dubai’s Expo has divided the event into the subthemes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability—key drivers, it believes, of the future of global progress.
The Expo has been designed in an area of some 438 hectares two times bigger that Milan Expo.
Expo 2020 Dubai will be the first World Expo ever hosted in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region and the largest event ever held in the Arab World.
The six-month extravaganza of culture, architecture, entertainment, global cuisine, and more, will attract more than 200 organizations including 192 nations, each with their own pavilion, a World Expo first
Expo 2020 in Dubai runs from October 1, 2021 until March 31 2022.
Head of the Expo Committee of Iran Chamber of Commerce Farshid Farzanegan said on September 22 that the proximity of the Expo 2020 Dubai venue to Iran is an opportunity that should be properly exploited by the Iranian government and private sector.
Farzanegan, also the Chairman of Iran-UAE Joint Chamber of Commerce, told Iran Chamber newsroom that the event provides a chance for improving the Iranian brands.
He noted that the related Iranian officials aim to exploit all the country’s capacity for an active presence in the Expo.