With an exhibition created and curated by AMO, the think-tank of OMA, the Qatar Pavilion has opened at World Expo 2025 Osaka-Kansai. 

Qatar's Ministry of Commerce and Industry commissioned the pavilion, while the Chairperson's Office of Qatar Museums' Qatar Blueprint, a think tank, oversaw its creative and content direction. 

The exhibition, titled From the Coastline, We Progress, offers an experience narrative where ecology, culture, and economic transformation merge as it examines the nation's identity as it is shaped by its coastlines. Qatar has become the economic and diplomatic powerhouse it is today thanks to its carefully managed rise.

The exhibition offers an in-depth look of Qatar's long-standing relationship with its shoreline, spanning twelve significant coastal areas. Qatar is a small peninsula with a sparse interior. 

For ages, Doha has built its industries and cultures around its coastlines, reflecting its rich past as well as its development into a future-focused vision.

Visitors see a color gradient that alludes to coming ashore as they approach the pavilion's entry, which features sandy coastlines and shallow turquoise waters. 

Aerial photography of the ecosystems along Qatar's coastline, especially Al Zubarah in the northwest, is shown in the outdoor vitrines. 

Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed bin Thani and Ahmed bin Hassan Al-Hassan Al-Muhannadi both wrote poems that capture the beauty and abundance of Qatar's natural surroundings. 

Inside, visitors are guided to the main exhibition area by transparent tubes filled with sands of different colors, which symbolize the desert landscapes.

The primary display area is surrounded by a deep blue curtain that symbolizes the complex layers of the sea and was created in partnership with the landscape and interior architecture firm Inside Outside. 

The images, which overlay biological systems, industrial infrastructure, and archaeological sites, emphasize the careful navigation required to address the intricate relationships between humans and sea life. 

The history and current growth of Qatar are depicted in an introductory panel. Two maps are shown: a sophisticated modern nautical chart that emphasizes both human and non-human surroundings, and a map of nineteenth-century Qatar with communities along the shore. 

Each of the twelve niches in the installation, which are cut from an aluminum-clad wedge shape, displays a curving, backlit panorama of important zones. 

The elaborate maps and colorful beads used in these exhibits represent Qatar's cultural, industrial, ecological, hospitality, and heritage-related endeavors. 

Old Doha Port and the Corniche, one of the main areas of development following Qatar's independence; Ras Laffan and Fuwairit, home to one of the world's largest liquefied natural gas ports; Khor Al-Udaid, a proposed UNESCO World Heritage site; and Mesaieed and Al Wakrah, an industrial zone and historic port, are among the locations.

The exhibition's focal point is a cinema area modeled after Qatar's traditional winter camps, which includes an AMO-directed film that documents the country's contemporary history using both new and priceless archives, ranging from Ron Fricke's observations of peninsula life to British Petroleum documentaries from the 1950s. 

Images of the Qatari people are juxtaposed with scenes of urban identity, wildlife, and natural settings in the three-screen movie. A small collection of traditional items, loaned from and managed by the National Museum of Qatar, greets guests before they reach the gift store. These items were historically used by women on land and by men on pearl-diving excursions.

The exhibition will remain open until the closing of Expo 2025 on October 13. It is the most recent addition to OMA's growing portfolio in the Gulf, which includes projects like the 2017 completion of the Qatar Foundation's offices and the Qatar National Library. 

Making Doha, the inaugural exhibition at the Qatar National Museum in 2019, is just one example of the several research and exhibition projects AMO has undertaken that center on Qatar. 

Furthermore, AMO has written a great deal about the area's fast urbanization in two special issues of Volume magazine, Al Manakh: Gulf Continued (2010) and Al Manakh (2007). 

AMO's Countryside, A Place to Live, Not to Leave exhibition will open in Doha in October of this year.

Yotam Ben Hur, Shinji Takagi, and Samir Bantal conceived and curated the exhibition at Qatar Pavilion. The Qatar Pavilion was designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates.

In addition to an installation for Louis Vuitton at the French Pavilion, the exhibition is one of two OMA/AMO projects commissioned for Expo 2025.

Find out all pavilions on WAC's Osaka Expo 2025 page. 

All images © Marco Cappelletti, courtesy of AMO.

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AMO exhibition Osaka Expo pavilion