The Intersection of Digital and Spatial Immersion: Architecture of Pavilions at Expo Dubai 2020

Expo Dubai 2020 is clear evidence of a 21st-century radical switch regarding the reception of art exhibitions. As Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence technologies have already developed enough to show significant influences on art, the following topic considers the merging of architecture and digital art, which are building immersive experiences together. The aim of this paper is to establish the level of inseparability and the type of connection between spatial and digital aspects that cooperatively stimulate and define the movement of visitors. As the creative capacity of architecture and digital art is unlimited in production, three country pavilions, Brazilian, South Korean, and Italian at Expo Dubai 2020, with distinct concepts are analyzed. Selected pavilions were showing diverse approaches to the application of digital technologies within the space, which makes new possible categories to be explored. A strongly emphasized multisensory aspect of spatial experience can be discovered through simple architectural technology in the Brazilian pavilion combined with the symbolic element of water, sounds, and vapors together with digital projections. Symbiosis of digital and architectural components of space is reached in the Italian pavilion by the double shifting of both digital and physical parts of the rope façade. The apparent combination of digital and analog surfaces on the kinetic facade in the Korean pavilion completes the basis for discussion about methods of hybridization of architecture and digital art. Although architecture is, according to Peter Sloterdijk, the original form of immersion, the selected pavilions demonstrate that participants of the state-of-the-art symbiosis of architecture and digital art can experience new types of immersive reception, simultaneously showcasing the application of the concept of mimesis. Article received: May 12, 2022; Article accepted: July 15, 2022; Published online: October 15, 2022; Original scholarly paper