The 40,000 square-foot Pavilion, known as the “Dream Cube,” designed by Edwin Schlossberg’s firm, ESI in New York, which opens on May 1 at the Shanghai world expo, encourages visitors to participate in an multimedia experience comprised of cutting-edge technology, dreamlike environments, collaborative social spaces and sustainably designed materials.
The Dream Cube leads visitors through a beautiful story of the city’s past, present and future. The experience also transforms moment-by-moment via their collective participation. Crowd-sourced photos uploaded by the public at the Dream Cube website blend with stunning video on immense media walls. Beds of glowing LED crystalline reeds change color with the sweep of visitors’ hands. A 360-degree interactive theater showcases the audience’s gestures and physical actions, which trigger dramatic changes to millions of LED lights on the Dream Cube’s façade. In these ways, the Dream Cube promises to set new trends for future designs of large-scale public events.
Inside the Dream Cube, visitors travel through a 20-minute journey inspired by fourth-century Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi’s dream that he was a butterfly (or, alternately, a butterfly dreaming it was Zhuangzi). Visitors ascend on an escalator, surrounded by bluish light and soft music, into the heart of the Dream Cube. There they stroll along the “Dreamer’s Path,” a visual story of the city of Shanghai through time – from a small rural village to a vibrant mega-metropolis. Along the path, interactive areas fill with flying butterflies, changing seasons, crowd-sourced images of city life, sculptural lighting and surprise video “portals” that respond to visitor interaction. The path ultimately leads visitors into a massive circular theater — the Dream Cube Control Room — where they gather to participate in a 360-degree interactive video experience narrated by the actress and director Xu Jinglei, who plays “Professor Butterfly” in the Dream Cube story. In the final climactic moments, Professor Butterfly reveals live-feed images of the exterior façade, as she rallies the crowd to wave their arms high in the air. The Dream Cube’s exterior pulses with color in time with their collective actions, sweeping them up in the emotional power of collaboration. For video of the Cube go here.
