While the pavilions for Expo 2020 Dubai are currently under various stages of construction, three monumental gateways to the 1,083-acre fair site are now among the first elements to be completed. Built using a woven carbon fiber composite, the three 70-foot-tall, freestanding “gateway” structures are both incredibly lightweight without compromising durability or requiring any additional support, lending them an ethereal quality under the Arabian sun. The installations’ delicate infrastructure is the product of over three years of collaboration between London-based architecture firm Asif Khan Ltd., a manufacturer specializing in carbon composites, and an aircraft engineer. Their intricate patterning was engineered to not only strike a balance between material efficiency, shading, airflow, manufacturing time, and structural strength but to also reference the mashrabiya, an ornamental window type used in homes across the region to extend beyond their property lines. The combination of vernacular aesthetics and technological ingenuity reflects the spirit of Dubai’s inaugural expo, which seeks to remind attendants that while the city has gained international recognition in the last half-century, it also has hundreds of years of culture on display as well. During the 173 days of the event, guests will enter through 34-foot-tall operable doorways to enter each of the three Expo 2020 districts: Opportunity, Mobility, and Sustainability. “The portals will be the first and last encountering moment for all who make the journey to Expo 2020 Dubai,” Asif Khan said in a press statement, "and these capture the very transcendental moment the region is experiencing as it hosts its first World Expo—the celebration not only of UAE’s heritage, but also the future." The structures are the first pieces unveiled from Asif Khans commission for Expo 2020 Public Realm, a 3.7-mile linear park that will also include a running track and seating co-designed with Lara Captan. “Designing the Public Realm for Expo 2020 Dubai is a seminal moment for my practice,” Khan added. “Each aspect of the design invites visitors to immerse themselves in shared Islamic culture, art and language in dialogue with the future spirit of Expo.” Of course, Asif Khan is no stranger to designing otherworldly temporary installations; the firm’s Vantablack-coated pavilion, resembling a slice of outer space, turned heads when it touched down in Seoul for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Expo 2020 will open its doors to the public on October 20 and will remain open until Apr 10, 2021.

As excitement around the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea builds for the February 9^th opening ceremony, London-based architecture firm Asif Khan Ltd. has revealed a pitch-black pavilion sponsored by Hyundai Motor. Coated in Vantablack VBx2, the world’s blackest black paint, the exterior of the parabolic pavilion is lit with thousands of point lights and resembles a field of floating stars. “From a distance the structure has the appearance of a window looking into the depths of outer space,” said Asif Khan in a press release. “As you approach it, this impression grows to fill your entire field of view. So on entering the building, it feels as though you are being absorbed into a cloud of blackness.” Vantablack’s impenetrable darkness is based in its structure, as the paint is made of tangled carbon nanotubes that trap light on a microscopic level. At 32 feet tall and 114 feet long on all four sides, the monolithic Hyundai Pavilion is the largest continuous nanostructure in history. It also represents the first architectural application of Vantablack. While the original iteration of Vantablack paint was so fragile that it could only be installed under laboratory conditions, VBx2 suspends the coating in a spray solution and can be directly applied. The resultant structure, though the walls are curved inwards, has been seemingly rendered as a flat void and stripped of its volume; inside the effect couldn’t be more different. Playing on the theme of hydrogen, in reference to Hyundai’s foray into fuel cell-powered vehicles, the interior of the pavilion is a stark white and anchored by an interactive water installation. As visitors walk around the interior, water drops are elongated as they flow through channels carved into the floor and pool at a central drain. “The water installation visitors discover inside is brightly lit in white. As your eyes adjust, you feel for a moment that the tiny water drops are at the scale of the stars,” said Khan. “A water droplet is a size every visitor is familiar with. In the project I wanted to move from the scale of the cosmos to the scale of water droplets in a few steps. The droplets contain the same hydrogen from the beginning of the universe as the stars.” The usage of Vantablack has been a contentious topic in the short five years it’s been around. While Anish Kapoor made headlines after claiming the exclusive rights to the pigment’s use, Asif Khan has been working closely with the researchers behind Vantablack since 2013 and has previously proposed using it for a variety of projects. The Hyundai Pavilion will open to the public alongside the Olympics on February 9, in Pyeongchang.

From June 10 to September 10, "We Are Energy" will be on show at the 2017 International Exposition in Astana, Kazakhstan. Though its name may sound like a Brian Eno number, We Are Energy is indeed the work of British architect, Asif Khan, whose pavilion houses an immersive, 360-degree CGI display screen. Eno is composing a soundtrack.

Echoing tones and shades of Spielberg's Minority Report, Khan's ephemeral work will feel like a dystopian Lazer Tag setting, except without the shrieking and zap-sounds as neon blue lights form a rotunda of sorts in the 23,600-square-foot space. This shell will be manufactured off-site. When put in place, it will be encircled by a screen that leaves space for visitors to walk between the two circular objects.

The shell itself is semi-permeable for most of its perimeter. People can see through the volume and place their hands between the light rods that fan down, though only actually enter the space at one point. The screen, meanwhile, acts as a visual barrier, tracing the shell's enlarged perimeter at eye-level and displaying a "timeline of energy."

To complement the design, musician Brian Eno has composed a piece to accompany the experience. Titled "Future Energy," the score will play on a continuous loop. In a statement on his website, Khan said:

The universe was formed 13.8 billion years ago. At that moment all energy and matter was in the same place at the same time. The idea that everything, including life on earth, is comprised of this archaic energy is fascinating to me. I wanted to find a way to express this relationship to our visitors and explore how energy is being continually harnessed and balanced around us.

Professor of Astrophysics Catherine Heymans, from the University of Edinburgh, has also contributed to the project. As reported by the Architects' Journal, Khan's studio is working alongside KBW Designs and Woo.

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is unveiling high-profile projects at an unprecedented rate. The Copenhagen- and New York–based firm today released the rendering for its Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens. The “un-zipped wall” features fiberglass, brick-like elements that pull apart to form space for visitors to stroll through. The design is more linear than most past Serpentines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wb_zuxSzQE "As you can see from the architect's renders, Bjarke Ingels has responded to the brief for a multipurpose pavilion with a supremely elegant structure that is both curvaceous wall and soaring spire, that will surely serve as a beacon – drawing visitors across Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to visit the pavilion, the summerhouses and our major exhibitions by Alex Katz and Etel Adnan," said gallery directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist in a statement. Four the first time, the pavilion will be complemented by four summer houses. Those will be designed by Berlin architects Barkow Leibinger, Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi, Paris-based architect Yona Friedman and English architect Asif Khan. All of the designs play off of Queen Caroline's Temple, a nearby 18th-century Neo-Classical garden folly. Khan’s design is a series of undulating timber spikes, while Yona Friedman has put forth a modular design meant to reference how cities grow, a reference to his La Ville Spatiale. Barkow Leibinger’s design references a now-demolished building that once sat on the site. Adeyemi references the folly in a void-like negative impression.

Competition or PR stunt? That's up to you to decide, but there is no debate that the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition has provoked some interesting conversations around issues of the cultural institution in the globalized 21st century. On June 23, the Guggenheim will announce a winner, from the 1,715 official entries, all of which you can see here. However, the most interesting parts of the competition will probably be auxiliary to the building chosen on next Tuesday. In October 2014, the list was trimmed to a more manageable (and anonymous) six finalists. One of the spin-offs of the Helsinki competition is Next Helsinki, an alternative call-for-proposals that solicited new ideas about how the museum can bring its centrally located, waterfront site to life through the continuation of emergent urban trends. Rather than simply create another icon, Michael Sorkin explained on the website, organizers initiated the competition because of an “outrage at the march of the homogenizing multi-national brand culture emblematized by the imperial Guggenheim franchise—the cultural equivalent of Starbucks—was what launched us.” However, they also did it because they care about the city of Helsinki. “The feeling of love came from our mutual affection for Helsinki, from a sense that it is a singular place, unique in setting, form, and culture. Understanding the impetus to acquire a Guggenheim as a pursuit of the vaunted Bilbao effect, the idea that some gaudy global repository would put a tired place on the map, we wondered why a city so indelibly fixed in the urban firmament, so superb, would ant to surrender such a fabulous site to some starchitect supermarket,” Sorkin continued. For more on the Next Helsinki project, and to see the shortlisted projects, see their website.

Over 1,700 proposals were submitted in the Guggenheim Foundation’s open-call competition to design a new museum in Helsinki—and now, just six teams remain. In a statement, the competition’s 11-member jury said it shortlisted these schemes because they would each “expand the idea of what a museum can be.” The teams that made the cut are AGPS Architecture (Zurich, Los Angeles), Asif Khan (London), Fake Industries Architectural Agonism (New York, Barcelona, Sydney), Haas Cook Zemmrich STUDIO2050 (Stuttgart), Moreau Kusunoki Architect (Paris), SMAR Architecture Studio (Madrid, Western Australia). While the names of the teams have been unveiled, the six proposals are only known by individual registration numbers. Physical models of these plans will be produced in March and a single winner will be selected in June. But as AN reported earlier this fall, what happens next in Helsinki remains to be seen. This news comes as the Guggenheim makes a renewed push into the world of architecture. In November, the Foundation named Troy Conrad Therrien as its first-ever curator of Architecture & Digital Initiatives. He will likely play a significant role in the further rollout of this competition. You can read about the six finalists below, with descriptions courtesy of each team. For more on these proposals and what happens next, visit the competition's website. From the design team:

GH-76091181 comprises a ring of slender, sculptural towers faced with timber shingles, reminiscent of vernacular architecture, gathered around a cathedral-like central space. The towers, with their play of light and shadow, create an architectural beacon, visible by land or sea, while the central space, sheltered from extremes of weather yet part of the quayside, provides an exceptional new site for public events on the waterfront. Exhibition galleries are housed in timber cabinets stacked within the towers. Bridges connecting the towers offer respite space for visitors between experiencing art and offer new viewing points over the city and harbor.

From the design team:

GH-5631681770 reconfigures circulation and use of the East and West Harbors to establish an area of industrial activity and an area of cultural activity, with the museum as the link between the city and the waterfront. In a critical shift from the idea of a building as static object to a building that accommodates the flux of daily life, a city street runs through the interior of the museum, opening it to appropriation by the citizens and creating a combination of programs: a museum program and an unpredictable street program, in which visitors may become productive and creative users of the space.

From the design team:

GH-04380895 links the museum to the rest of the city through a pedestrian footbridge to Tähtitorninvuori Park and a promenade along the port, including a food hall and a market during the warm months. The museum programs are housed in pavilion-scale buildings treated as independent, fragmentary volumes within this landscape, allowing for a strong integration of outdoor display and event spaces with interior exhibition galleries. The ensemble is made to stand out from afar by being composed around a landmark tower. The use of charred timber in the facade evokes the process of regeneration that occurs when forests burn and then grow back stronger than before.

From the design team:

GH-121371443 drapes a skin of textured glass panels over a bar-like, two-story interior structure, creating an environmentally sustainable public space between the facade and the gallery volumes, with natural light diffused throughout. In an unusual innovation, the element that makes the building sustainable—the intelligent glass wrapper, which uses technology such as Nanogel glazing and rollable thermal shutters—is also the element that distinguishes the project visually, giving the building an ethereal presence. Within the building, an annex for the work of younger Nordic artists is paired with a market hall, and a service pavilion encloses a sculpture garden.

From the design team:

GH-1128435973 creates two facilities in dialogue with each other. The ground floor is an adaptive reuse of the existing Makasiini Terminal, conceived as a public space that extends the pedestrian boardwalk into the building. This is a place for education, civic activity, and incubating ideas. The second floor is an exhibition hall on stilts, which hovers above the terminal building, partly removed from everyday life. The long rectangular volume offers a flexible space for all types of exhibitions and adheres to the notion of a museum as a space apart. Through this dual scheme, the proposed museum could engage its public to co- create value and meaning.

 From the design team:

GH-5059206475 reuses the laminated wood structure of the Makasiini Terminal to rebuild a wooden volume that exactly follows the geometry of the original, and preserves the current views from the park and the adjacent buildings. Within this structure—essentially an undisturbed network of existing conditions—the project creates 31 rooms: eight of them measuring 20 x 20 m, 18 of them 6.5 x 6.5 m, four of them 10 x 10 m, and one 40 x 100 m. This rigid set of spatial conditions is combined with a deliberate distribution of climates based on the program and principles of sustainability, with each room acclimatized independently so that the galleries together form a 'thermal onion.'

Take a moment from celebrating the first American curling victory of this Olympics to observe Asif Khan's Megaface in action. Previewed in the lead up to the Games, the wall is now installed and has been projecting the faces of visitors to Sochi on the side of the Megafon pavilion for the past week. The realized version is found lacking in the thin drape rendered in preliminary iterations of the structure. Instead hundreds of spherical bulbs are left exposed as they protrude and recede to form the faces of those willing to lend their likeness to the installation. While the initial plan had been to replicate the skin tone of spectators, the effect was abandoned in favor of a monochromatic palette, after its realism was deemed "really scary." Those who visit special photobooths peppered throughout the Olympic campus are given a special code that alerts them to when they will have the chance to come face to face with their 20-foot-tall visage. Russia's Mount Rushmore will close on February 23rd with the ending of the Olympic games.

More Nine Inch Nails than Mount Rushmore, the upcoming Sochi Olympics will feature a new giant pinscreen that renders impressions of the faces of visitors to the Games. The pavilion for Russian mobile phone giants Megafon will play host to the installation, which was designed by British architect Asif Khan. "Megaface" will display three faces simultaneously, each measuring 20 by 26 feet. Every 20 seconds the images emerging from the wall will change, an interval that will allow some 170,000 unique faces to grace the facade of the building during the two-week duration of the Olympics. Khan worked closely with Swiss company iart, who developed the technology that makes such a spectacle possible.  10,000 telescopic cylinders capable of extending over 6 feet combine to form the facial images. Each "pin" is tipped with an led light that shines through a thin sheet draped over the facade that flexes as the images materialize. The source for the three-dimensional portraits comes from on-site photo-booths capable of making 3-d facial scans. Those who make an appearance on the wall will be sent a link depicting their visage emanating from the side of the pavilion.