Pro AVL editor Simon Luckhurst speaks to Peter Herring, Creative Technology Middle East’s head of solutions and engineering about the recent DP World upgrades at Expo City Dubai.
As a live events company, there’s often a mindset that once the job has been done, it’s straight onto the next. There’s little reflection time as you bounce from venue-to-venue, carting gear to all corners of the country. In the world of systems integration, however, the conversation is more nuanced. How permanent is this particular exhibit, will its nature change over time, and how long can we keep things feeling modern and futuristic before a refresh is required? It’s not necessarily a more difficult problem, but it certainly demands a different mentality.
When Dubai first stated its intention to host the 2020 Expo, there was a lot of uncertainty around the long-term fate of the city-sized complex once the expo wrapped up. If the stars aligned, pavilions could theoretically be operated for many years into the future, giving them a second lease of life. But nobody was quite sure how successful that endeavour might be.
Such was the conundrum Creative Technology Middle East (CTME) found itself in when called on for assistance in the creation of the DP World expo pavilion – tasked with providing a physical/digital experience that follows the flow of time, trade, knowledge, ideas, innovation and progress, all brought to life through the clever use of audio, video, lighting and control systems.
Inside, the expo experience was based around the concept of “Making Trade Flow”, and provided rich content to give visitors an insight into the world of global trade. Split over five floors, the lower four are dedicated to the public visitor experience, delivering interactive galleries that were designed to educate, enthuse and inspire on how trade impacts everyday life.
The original design from CT attempted to peer into the future as much as was practical, but as the building’s use case evolved over time, AV requirements in certain areas had to be readdressed.
“Creative Technology was initially commissioned by Open Lab in 2019, although our contract was directly with DP World. We were called on to bring their vision to life,” explains CTME’s head of solutions and engineering, Peter Herring. “Everything at the time, however, was focused on the expo and that subsequently became one of the biggest negatives for this space. It was designed to do just one job and that was to be a pavilion, with a very structured programme. If you’ve got 180 days of events in the space and only two of those days are a show, as a designer, do you design for the two or the 180?
“With the change of use of this space since the expo, there are now a lot of DP World private events happening here, and they also rent the building out to companies DP World does business with.”
In its original form, interactive exhibits filled the lower four levels of the pavilion providing visitors with insights into the DP World business, all overlooking a central waterfall and ground-floor in-the–round seating area where regular presentations and impromptu talks would be delivered – the Flow Gallery. The uppermost fifth floor remained a private space where senior management could host VIPs and government officials to conduct meetings/conferences.
Now the expo has concluded, the space is being used for ongoing company activities. “There’s a youth forum taking place in here tomorrow, for example, that they’re currently rehearsing for,” explains Herring. “There’s a community element to everything as well. It’ll be a group that DP World is associated with in some way, and the space will be provided free of charge.”
Several of the original exhibits constructed for the expo are no longer relevant or utilised in the same way and have therefore been reworked. “With the structured shows, from a press of a button, a show happens and that’s it,” explains Herring. “Having impromptu events as they do now, you can’t operate without a sound desk. We found they would often bring in third party companies and set-up an FOH position on the overlooking balcony – because it’s really the only suitable space. To better facilitate this aspect in the future, we’ve custom-built floor boxes with fibre connections. We moved the existing grandMA lighting desk up to the balcony together with a new DiGiCo S21 audio console that has been purchased for permanent use alongside QLab.”
This created an obstacle given that the original project was carried out as a single holistic product. “The entirety of the Dante setup was one network for the entire building,” says Herring. “And the entirety of the AVB was one network for the entire building. It was designed that way intentionally. But obviously the big downside was that when a company comes in, they want to just plug in to the parts they need, not care about the 200 other Dante devices located four floors above.”
To solve this, CTME created a completely isolated network for the atrium space, with the caveat that signals could be bridged if needed. “We’ve got an AuviTran device that has two Dante cards. One card sits on the production network and one on the building network, and it’s the same with AVB. This means when you plug into an AVB port at the balcony FOH position, you only see the devices relevant for that space. But if there’s an emergency announcement that comes from the building control system, that is still able to talk to the speakers. Likewise, there is the option for them still to do a show relay from this space all the way up to Level Five.”
What was formerly the Opportunity Gallery on level three has also been reworked to fit these changing needs. “This area was heavily used during COP28 and they needed an additional private breakout room,” notes Herring. “They needed AV and came to us just two weeks before COP began. We had originally constructed an interactive table on the level above that was no longer in use and so were able to repurpose the 55-inch LG borderless screens forming the table into this breakout room and pair it with a new 3×3 LG videowall. For audio, the team repurposed QSC AD-S6T and AD-S4T ceiling-mounted speakers and amplifiers from the existing gallery install, paired with an existing Behringer X32 audio console and Shure ULXD radio mics.
“It’s a relatively simple setup here, but a lot of work went into it,” Herring says. . “We never want to sell to a client something they’ve already got, so being able to repurpose equipment where we can is very important.”
The ground floor atrium is the natural focal point of the pavilion and is host to multistorey 18m x 10m Unilumin 2.9mm LED screen, L-Acoustics Syva audio system and a range of Vari-Lite moving lighting fixtures – all of which was originally integrated for the expo. The primary control room at the back of the ground floor atrium, however, is now home to several pieces of new equipment.
“This room was already here, but as much as it was called the control room, the actual functionality that you got out of this space was very minimal,” says Herring. “We had only an MA Command Wing on a laptop, and the vision mixer. That was it. To extend its functionality we installed a structured fibre backbone, so not only is there fibre to upstairs but also to the back of the stage.”
This was achieved via a Lightware UBEX network-based virtual matrix which provides flexibility across the building in terms of patching in devices and routing video anywhere needed. “Some are in TRX mode,” notes Herring, “meaning they’ve got an input and an output on the stage if, for example, they want to plug in a laptop. We’ve also given them the ability to control all the inputs and outputs from a portable iPad.”
“The purpose of all our post-expo work at DP World has been maximise the flexibility of the space, allowing it to host a variety of different functions without the need for extensive planning. That meant transitioning away from a pre-determined show control system, and handing back operators control of the various AV elements within.”
Finally, the VIP area on the fifth floor features the Chairman Majlis’ meeting room and a lounge area. “It’s a private space for the chairman and DP world employees,” recalls Herring, and is segregated into a lounge area, as well as one big and one small meeting room. The original concept was that it was going to be used for him to meet and greet his guests and would be simply used for video conferencing. Originally, we had a very small video conferencing system attached to an absolutely massive LED screen.”
Ultimately, with the rework it was determined that the audio was no longer fit for current purposes. “Initially this space only required light BGM, but subsequently ended up being used to host banquets for 50-60 people, often with a presenter. Occasionally the seating is also reconfigured in an auditorium style.”
As a result, the existing QSC ceiling speakers have been replaced with a pair of L-Acoustics Soka column arrays and SB10i subwoofers recessed into the ceiling, combined with multiple 5XTs spread around the room.
“This was one of the primary spaces they wanted improving, and I believe they’re very happy with the refresh,” notes Herring. “The quality of the sound in here now is phenomenal.”
Reflecting on a project that has kept members of his team successively involved over an extensive five-plus-year period, Herring is proud of CTME’s ability to continually reinvest and repurpose as much of the original project spec as possible.
“Overall, DP World really didn’t have many plans for the pavilion beyond the expo when construction first started,” concludes Herring. “The fact that we’ve been able to turn it back into a functional space by reusing as much equipment as possible, was a huge draw for them. Furthermore, given the fact they’re now building a new HQ behind the pavilion site, future usage will undoubtedly only increase from here on out.”
