Architects Höweler + Yoon have proposed an interactive ‘Living Lab’ for the Dubai 2020 Expo, which would creatively explore human empathy.

The Empathy Pavilion, designed like a giant elevated cave, would house a 300-person capacity exhibition gallery on the ground floor, several workshop spaces on the second floor and a black box theatre on the top floor.

The architects have partnered with the MIT Media Lab’s Opera of the Future Group and composer Tod Machover to create an interactive experience for the pavilion, which allows guests to “act simultaneously as researchers, participants, and performers” in an exploration of how we experience and display empathy.

Use of space, lighting and auditory elements would encourage visitors to interact and share their feelings with one another as part of a choreographed experience.

The cave-like voids built into the pavilion design would provide naturally cooled public spaces for visitors to gather following experience inside. These spaces would house open air events, concerts, talks and food and beverage amenities.

“This is a building designed for unprecedented casual and calibrated discourse,” said Höweler + Yoon. “Internally, the building is organised as an upward synthetic progression of performances, exhibitions, installations, and laboratories innovative in their relation to empathy, in its research, outreach and study. Externally, the principal expression is both programmatic and thermally strategic.”

The wider theme of the Expo is ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’, with a focus on showcasing sustainable solutions to world issues. Three centrepiece pavilions based on subthemes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability will anchor the Expo’s three districts and be designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, Foster + Partners and Grimshaw Architects respectively.

Over 180 nations are also expected to participate with pavilions, exhibitions and events. As the host nation, the United Arab Emirates has planned a high-profile pavilion, which will be designed by Santiago Calatrava.

The Expo will take place between October 2020 and April 2021. Afterwards, many of the structures will be transformed into permanent legacy projects.

If built, the Empathy pavilion is designed to become a permanent theatre and exhibition space.

The proposal has been developed in collaboration with engineering firms Atelier One and Buro Happold, along with energy specialists Transsolar.