world Expo 2025 taiwan Brighter Futures

For the Osaka 2025 World Expo, Taiwan highlights their innovative might from their aboriginal past, to present-day manufacturing; simultaneously promoting Taiwan's natural beauty as well as their efforts to preserve it. Their last exhibit invites visitors to partake in a tradition to wish upon a lantern for a better future.

Experiential Design, Education, Exhibit Design

Role
Creative Director, Visual Design, Spatial and Experiential Design, Interaction Design, Creative Technologist

Duration
6 Weeks

Skills
Brand Identity, IoT, Storyboarding, Presentations, 3D Modeling, 3D Printing, Prototyping, Animation, Creative Coding

Tools
Figma, Illustrator, AfterEffects, Photoshop, Rhino, Arduino

Overview

A story that needs to be told

Taiwan has not been able to attend a World Expo in their own name other than 2010, making this expo the first time modern audiences are seeing Taiwan. Whether you know Taiwan for its semiconductor industry, or its food, or its natural scenery, I believe the most beautiful thing about Taiwan is the people and their resiliency. The goal of this expo is to share something meaningful about Taiwanese traditions, and to encourage people to visit Taiwan in the future.

My Role

Connecting the past, present, and future

The world expo invites countries to build pavilions in the host city, capturing each country’s dedication to sustainability. Through this pavilion I tell the story of Taiwan’s dedication to the Earth beginning from is aboriginal past to the modern inventions today. I created assets beginning from the physical space, to the UI of the quiz interface in the space.

Motif

Literally and figuratively creating a brighter future

There is a New Year’s tradition where one would put their wishes on the side of a lantern before floating it up to the sky above. It is believed to take away people’s troubles and bring people luck and prosperity. The higher the lantern would climb, the more fortune and wealth it would bring.

Additionally, although not explicitly stated in the following exhibit, sky lanterns were historically used to signify safety. After a village was attacked someone would go back down to the village, and if it was safe they would light the lantern and the rest of the villagers would return. If Taiwan truly will be able to attend an Expo in the future, it would mean something big shifted in their political relationships in a good way, and in a way, signal it’s safe for them again.

Making a meaningful wish

Walkthrough

Archetype Quiz

Define your sustainability personality

Pulling on the popular personality tests, the quiz simultaneously creates an engaging and personalized takeaway artifact and sets the visitor up for the next part of the experience: making a wish for a more sustainable future.

Components

Four sustainability archetypes

In my research there were four sustainability archetypes. By taking the quiz, you would be eventually categorized into one of these archetypes, and a personalized flower will be created. This flower also acts as your digital take-away from the exhibition, that can be shared on social media.

Representing a country abroad

Pavilion Experience Overview

This Expo may be people’s first or only exposure to Taiwan.

By the end of the experience we want people to feel excited for the future of Taiwan, and maybe even want to go visit the country.

Pavilion Concept

Living with the land

Taiwan is a small island nation, with 2/3 of its available land being a mountainous terrains. This means that throughout history Taiwan had to get really creative with how they use their natural resources, and the technology they use to preserve it.

Exhibit Concept

Wishing, together, for a brighter future

The exhibit that is rendered here is the conclusion exhibit of the space. Drawing from the Taiwanese New Years tradition of writing one’s wishes on the side of a lantern, this time we ask visitors to reflect on the exhibit and make their own wish for a more sustainable future.

Visual Concept

Orchids, beautiful and resilient

Taiwan can be dubbed the “island of orchids” with over 2,000 species (and counting) growing in Taiwan. Orchids are finicky, but with the right conditions and nourishment they thrive into beautiful blooms. Taiwan may be small and easily overlooked, the motif of orchids represents the natural beauty and resilience of the Taiwanese people.

Final Reflections

Researching through people

I’ve gotten used to doing my research online through websites and videos, but it was surprisingly hard to find information about just Taiwan. Not Taiwan the semiconductor industry, or Taiwan and its relationship to China. Some articles I only managed to find after I started Googling in Chinese. However, I ended up getting some of my most valuable information or leads from my family members around me.

Poetry lingers

A week before the project was due the WLED library crashed, and I lost all the lighting animation I’ve been creating. I lost so much work in the span of minutes, and the worst part was that I couldn’t even figure out why. After that everytime I reached a “checkpoint” (ie making a change big enough for me to feel the need to commit) I took a photo of it. It sucked losing all my work the first time, but at the very least the second time it happened I was prepared.

To the people who have helped

To the people I reached out to to ask about Taiwan thank you for thoughtful responses. Especially my mom for sending me articles (even though they were all in Chinese).

To Vicky for helping with me the code of my lantern, you took something that kind of worked to something that worked consistently.

There are always tools

I was really worried about how I could prototype the LEDs for this project, after a good few days of trying I figured there must be a better way. Several Google rabbit holes and a chance encounter on Reddit later, I stumbled upon the WLED library.

Acknowledgements

To the people who have helped

I want to give all my gratitude to Haeyoung. This was the first project I took on that felt more controversial, and more personal. I was pushed to think beyond the conventional to bring this story to life.

Thank you to Luca for being the person to look beyond the web and media to gather research for this project. Our conversations about Taiwan and how it sits within Asia really helped drive this project forward.

Growing upward, reaching for safety and hope

The Taiwan pavilion is intentionally designed as three floors, with visitors entering the third floor and leaving from the first floor. With each floor the visitor walks down the pavilion is framed in an increasingly personal way, challenging visitors to think: What does sustainability mean to you? By the time they leave, visitors will have left their budding answer to the question by sending their own sky lantern up through the pavilion back to the third floor.

Concept Overview

Pavilion Concept

Celebrating Taiwan’s Nature

Interaction Concept

Literally and figuratively creating a Brighter Future

Every Lunar New Year thousands would gather in Pingxi to write their hopes and dreams for the year on the side of the sky lantern before sending it up to the sky. The custom is believed to bring luck and prosperity.