The United Nations World Expo
In the fall of 2019, I worked with an interdisciplinary group of peers to develop and present an exhibition concept, Twenty Percent, to the United Nations creative team for the UN’s pavilion at the 2020 World Expo in Dubai.
Twenty Percent
The Background
I collaborated with a group of 10 students, spanning the disciplines of Communications Design, Interior Design, and Industrial Design. Our team designed, conceptualized, wrote, and built the exhibition Twenty Percent. The exhibition emphasizes the role the UN has had as an invisible thread through history, connecting our past, present, and future.
The exhibition asks the visitor to view 2020 as a checkpoint, placing us 20% through the 21st century. Throughout the exhibition experience, visitors are confronted with reflecting on our global failures and successes as human beings from 2000 to now. Visitors are left with the lasting question, what can we as individuals, local communities, and global societies contribute to the remaining 80% of this century?
+ Exhibition Design
+ Spatial Storytelling
+ Research
+ Interdisciplinary Collaboration
+ Conceptual Development
+ Pitching & Presentation
The Ten Checkpoints
The Challenge
The exhibition is divided into ten main checkpoint installations, each one relating to a major topic impacting individuals, nations, and societies globally and locally: technology, travel, space, peacekeeping, global economy, natural resources, environment, food, refugees, and children. Ultimately, the selection of the ten checkpoints were derivative of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The global successes and failures pertaining to the specific topic are analyzed at each checkpoint. The exhibition culminates in the reflection room; once again asking visitors to consider what they can contribute to the next 80% of this century.
Invisible Thread
The Approach
For the last 75 years, the United Nations has been the leading example of global connection, communication, and collaboration. The exhibition weaves the concept of the United Nations as an invisible thread within the ten checkpoints, revealing the inevitable relationship that the United Nations has had with all major topics.
Thought-provoking
Informative
Empowering
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
I feel unbelievably fortunate to have been able to collaborate with such a talented group of designers, each contributing a broad range of ideas, awarenesses, and skills. On December 4, 2019 our class traveled to NYC to pitch the exhibition concepts to the United Nations Board of Design in person. I was honored to be selected as the Communications Design student representative to introduce the entire project.
