Words by Herbert Wright

United Arab Emirates

Architecture Foster + Partners
Area 4,386 sq m

The Emirates' 140m-long site starts with an entrance apron that channels visitors into a sinuous passage between 12m-high, mud-coloured walls, as if along a wadi, but also referencing the shaded (and somewhat straighter) streets of Foster's Masdar campus in Abu Dhabi, modelled from traditional Arab cities. The walls are rippled like sand dunes but are actually GRC (glass-fibre reinforced concrete) panels pre-cast in China.

At two points down this trail are arrays of cubical vitrines, like jewellery showcases. In them, delicate and magical animations are projected on angled glass to look like holograms (similar is found in Italy's pavilion), showing ideas such as dates as a future food, making biofuels or eating fish.

Visitor groups pause at these points, heightening the anticipation of their quest for the whatever lies at the head of the wadi. At last it appears, 85m from the start -- a great drum clad in with coppery diamonds!

This is actually an auditorium, screening a film about the adventures of a young Sara that span deserts and decades. It's slightly silly, but very charming. Beneath is an exhibition, including models of a vast planned photovoltaic farm. The UAE takes 'Energy for Life' seriously, although it has distance to cover from oil dependency (a resource that Dubai, the most successful emirate, actually doesn't have). Adjoining the 15m-high drum are offices, doubtless to be busy with meetings about Expo 2020, which Dubai will host. By then, the whole pavilion will have been reinstalled in Masdar.

The UAE Pavilion is neither a Disney attraction nor a desert adventure, but it does offer entertainment and education, both lightly. The central feature of the passage through desert walls may feel like a studio set, but in high summer its cool air will be welcome and requires no plant machinery.