Expo 2025 Brighter Futures
For the Osaka 2025 World Expo, Taiwan highlights their innovative might from their aboriginal past, to present-day manufacturing; simultaneously promoting Taiwan's natural beauty as well as their efforts to preserve it.
Experiential Design, Education, Exhibit Design
Role
Creative Director, Visual Design, Spatial and Experiential Design, Interaction Design, Creative Technologist
Duration
6 Weeks
Skills
Brand Identity, IoT, Storyboarding, Presentations, 3D Modeling, 3D Printing, Prototyping, Animation, Creative Coding
Tools
Figma, Illustrator, AfterEffects, Photoshop, Rhino, Arduino
Overview
A story that needs to be told
Taiwan has not been able to attend a World Expo in their own name other than 2010, making this expo the first time modern audiences are seeing Taiwan. Whether you know Taiwan for its semiconductor industry, or its food, or its natural scenery, I believe the most beautiful thing about Taiwan is the people and their resiliency.
My Role
Connecting the past, present, and future
The world expo invites countries to build pavilions in the host city, capturing each country’s dedication to sustainability. Through this pavilion I tell the story of Taiwan’s dedication to the Earth beginning from is aboriginal past to the modern inventions today. I created assets beginning from the physical space, to the items in the merchandise store, to the UI of the quiz interface in the space.
Representing a country abroad
Pavilion Experience Overview
This Expo may be people’s first or only exposure to Taiwan.
By the end of the experience we want people to feel excited for the future of Taiwan, and maybe even want to go visit the country.
Pavilion Concept
Celebrating Taiwan’s Nature
Taiwan can be dubbed the “island of orchids” with over 2,000 species (and counting) growing in Taiwan. Orchids are finicky, but with the right conditions and nourishment they thrive into beautiful blooms. Taiwan may be small and easily overlooked, the motif of orchids represents the natural beauty and resilience of the Taiwanese people.
Pavilion Concept
Celebrating Taiwan’s Nature
Taiwan can be dubbed the “island of orchids” with over 2,000 species (and counting) growing in Taiwan. Orchids are finicky, but with the right conditions and nourishment they thrive into beautiful blooms. Taiwan may be small and easily overlooked, the motif of orchids represents the natural beauty and resilience of the Taiwanese people.
Curious to learn more?
There are three parts to this case study. This page is meant to give you an overview on the project and the final experience. For more information on rationale and process, there are different case studies. Click the section you’re interested in to learn more.
Resilient Beauty
Despite the fragile appearance of orchids, native Taiwanese orchids survive battering winds and rain on the mountainsides of Taiwan. Although Taiwan may be small and easily overlooked, the motif of orchids represents the natural beauty of Taiwan and the resilience of the Taiwanese people.
Visual Design
UI/UX
Quiz interface to provoke meaningful wishes
The ending experience of the pavilion is to make a wish for the future. To help people overcome their fear when making such a grand wish an interactive quiz was user tested and implemented.
Experiential Design
Brighter Futures, together
The overall pavilion was designed to go from past, to present, to future. The world expo is split into separate country pavilions, our future can only become brighter if we all work together despite of where we are from.
Final Reflections
Researching through people
I’ve gotten used to doing my research online through websites and videos, but it was surprisingly hard to find information about just Taiwan. Not Taiwan the semiconductor industry, or Taiwan and its relationship to China. Some articles I only managed to find after I started Googling in Chinese. However, I ended up getting some of my most valuable information or leads from my family members around me.
Poetry lingers
A week before the project was due the WLED library crashed, and I lost all the lighting animation I’ve been creating. I lost so much work in the span of minutes, and the worst part was that I couldn’t even figure out why. After that everytime I reached a “checkpoint” (ie making a change big enough for me to feel the need to commit) I took a photo of it. It sucked losing all my work the first time, but at the very least the second time it happened I was prepared.
To the people who have helped
To the people I reached out to to ask about Taiwan thank you for thoughtful responses. Especially my mom for sending me articles (even though they were all in Chinese).
To Vicky for helping with me the code of my lantern, you took something that kind of worked to something that worked consistently.
There are always tools
I was really worried about how I could prototype the LEDs for this project, after a good few days of trying I figured there must be a better way. Several Google rabbit holes and a chance encounter on Reddit later, I stumbled upon the WLED library.
Acknowledgements
To the people who have helped
I want to give all my gratitude to Haeyoung. This was the first project I took on that felt more controversial, and more personal. I was pushed to think beyond the conventional to bring this story to life.
Thank you to Luca for being the person to look beyond the web and media to gather research for this project. Our conversations about Taiwan and how it sits within Asia really helped drive this project forward.
Growing upward, reaching for safety and hope
The Taiwan pavilion is intentionally designed as three floors, with visitors entering the third floor and leaving from the first floor. With each floor the visitor walks down the pavilion is framed in an increasingly personal way, challenging visitors to think: What does sustainability mean to you? By the time they leave, visitors will have left their budding answer to the question by sending their own sky lantern up through the pavilion back to the third floor.
Concept Overview
Pavilion Concept
Celebrating Taiwan’s Nature
Taiwan can be dubbed the “island of orchids” with over 2,000 species (and counting) growing in Taiwan. Orchids are finicky, but with the right conditions and nourishment they thrive into beautiful blooms. Taiwan may be small and easily overlooked, the motif of orchids represents the natural beauty and resilience of the Taiwanese people.
Interaction Concept
Literally and figuratively creating a Brighter Future
Every Lunar New Year thousands would gather in Pingxi to write their hopes and dreams for the year on the side of the sky lantern before sending it up to the sky. The custom is believed to bring luck and prosperity.