In November 2022 the world came to Sharm El Sheikh for COP27, the UN Climate Change Conference. cycle™ Middle East got there a week earlier. In those seven days we built sixteen pavilions across roughly 3,000 square metres, as production partner to GL Live Events.
Eight were country pavilions. Saudi Arabia took the largest footprint at 1,008 square metres. Germany, Ukraine, Rwanda, Zambia, Namibia, Pakistan and El Salvador filled the rest, each one a national identity worked out in architecture, light and message in a handful of days.
The other eight belonged to organizations: the World Health Organization, the Nordic Co-operation, the Minderoo Foundation, RCREEE, the Global Wind Energy Council, Egypt's Ministry of Social Solidarity, Sustainable Energy for All and IASS Potsdam. Each carried a different story to a different audience inside one delivery window.
Seven days is a tight schedule for one stand. For sixteen at this scale, it holds only when the designers, the workshop, the logistics team and the crew on site belong to the same studio and read from the same drawings. We waited on no subcontractor's calendar.
COP27 shows how we are set up. We carried each pavilion from concept to the last bolted panel ourselves, on the floor, against the clock.
An event about the climate also sets the bar for how we build. We framed the pavilions in modular, reusable systems and chose materials we could account for, then struck and recovered 3,000 square metres when the week ended.