An immersive journey through the stories shaping modern Saudi Arabia
A connected visitor journey across four immersive media galleries, combining large-scale film, animation, spatial sound and interactive technology.
The Challenge
The Saudi Pavilion was one of Expo 2025 Osaka’s most ambitious national pavilions, so the media needed to match the scale, beauty and precision of the architecture around it.
The challenge was to create content that could expand perceptions of Saudi Arabia, presenting a more layered and contemporary story of the Kingdom across heritage, marine conservation, sport and innovation.
For me, the task was to shape four distinct galleries into one coherent visitor journey, communicating national ambition with clarity, emotion and cinematic power.
My Approach
I approached the pavilion by looking for the human story inside each epic journey.
The subjects were vast: cities, coastlines, scientific research, elite sport and future-facing national projects. But for those stories to land emotionally, they needed to be anchored in people: athletes pushing their limits, scientists restoring coral reefs and communities shaping the future of their cities.
That human thread became my way of holding the experience together, shaping the narrative, visual language and emotional rhythm of the galleries so each space felt distinct, but part of one coherent world.
Designing Story and Space Together
The media was developed alongside the pavilion architecture, rather than after it. From the earliest stages, I worked with the wider design team to consider how film, animation, sound and interactive technology would physically shape the visitor experience.
This meant thinking beyond screen content and asking how each gallery should feel as a space: where visitors would stand, how their attention would move, how scale would be revealed and how each moment would transition into the next.
To support this process, we used an Unreal Engine digital twin of the pavilion, allowing us to prototype content inside the architecture before it was built. This helped us test sightlines, pacing, screen formats and the relationship between media and space, ensuring the storytelling was embedded into the experience rather than simply placed onto it.
Four Worlds, One Journey
The pavilion was structured around four immersive galleries, each exploring a different dimension of Saudi Arabia’s story.
As Lead Creative Director, I shaped the narrative and media approach across each space, ensuring that every gallery had its own identity while contributing to one connected visitor journey.
Evolving Cities explored heritage, culture and urban transformation through three projected films, with animated linework extending the storytelling into the surrounding architecture.
Sustainable Seas focused on Red Sea conservation and coral reef regeneration, using high-resolution underwater cinematography rather than CGI to capture the reality of the work first-hand.
Unlimited Human Potential celebrated Saudi Arabia’s athletes and sporting ambition. This was the gallery film I personally directed, shaping the narrative, selecting athletes and overseeing production across multiple locations.
Pinnacle of Innovation looked to the future through a large-scale LED and haptic experience, combining sweeping aerial perspectives, sound and physical vibration to reveal national innovation stories at monumental scale.
One Connected Journey
A key part of my role was maintaining creative consistency across a large and complex body of work.
I worked with directors, writers, animators, motion designers, musicians, producers and technical specialists, guiding the narrative, reviewing treatments and scripts, shaping visual direction and overseeing edits across multiple workstreams.
With productions taking place across Saudi Arabia, underwater in the Red Sea and internationally for the sports film, consistency became an important creative discipline.
Camera language, pacing, music, tone and emotional intensity all needed to feel carefully connected, even when the subjects and formats were completely different.
Teaser from the sports gallery film I directed, celebrating emerging athletes across Saudi Arabia.
Unlimited Human Potential
On Site in Osaka
I was based in Osaka for one month during installation, overseeing content integration, quality control and final creative refinements across the pavilion.
Working closely with audio and technical teams, I helped fine-tune the relationship between image, sound, vibration and space, ensuring the final visitor experience carried the scale, clarity and emotional impact we had developed throughout the project.
The Outcome
The Saudi Pavilion welcomed more than 2 million visitors and received major international recognition, including the BIE Gold Award for Architecture & Landscape, Gold at the New York Architectural Design Awards, the Expo Innovation Award for Technological Innovation and three wins at the EXHIBITOR Magazine World Expo Awards.
For me, the project showed how immersive media can turn complex national stories into experiences that feel human, cinematic and memorable.
