Digital Immersion on a Colossal Scale

Dubai City Walk

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2016

Dubai’s City Walk is an 85,700-square metre commercial district. This urban lifestyle destination offers designer shopping, beauty salons, fine dining, entertainment and public art in a vast pedestrian walkway. Project promoter Meraas called on Float4 to produce the content and manage the technical elements of the multimedia experiences along the public space via numerous technological devices (screens, projectors, lighting and motorized water-screens). It is the world’s largest multimedia experience within a retail setting. XYZ Cultural Technology was tasked with providing the technical design and integration of a control and broadcasting system that would operate all the elements on a continuous, synchronized basis. XYZ is also responsible for the first year of the system’s operation.

Photo Credit: Float4

Description

XYZ Cultural Technology’s experts programmed the control system that broadcasts three multimedia experiences using 34 projectors, 133 lighting features, 3 motorized water-screens and 30 LED screens comprising 21 different formats onto a surface equivalent to 12 American football fields. All the elements are connected by an automated communication system and operate on a continuous basis in an arid outdoor environment. A total of 33 video servers, 7,000 metres of fibre optics and 33,000 metres of video cable were used to bring this dazzling digital experience to life in Dubai’s vibrant City Walk!

The enormous projection and broadcast surfaces of varying dimensions, along with the specific format requirements of each medium, contributed to the project’s complexity. In addition to this considerable technical challenge, the main issue XYZ’s specialists encountered was ensuring the liaison between the construction team and the different subcontractors, who hailed from ten different countries, so that the systems could be properly integrated and connected.