Orbi, Dubai

Orbi is conceptualised to offer an amazing digital experience to its visitors and the entire space revolves around interactive technology. Designed by Bluehaus Group, the space is designed for people of all generations and different walks of life to share a common fascination with nature. Being located in the City Centre Mirdif and adjacent to the iFly centre, one of the fundamentals the design team had to solve was the acoustics. The acoustic design criteria proposed for this project have been assessed using a holistic approach to providing an excellent standard of acoustic comfort, privacy and speech intelligibility to comply with the highest international design standards.

The end-result of this project has far exceeded Bluehaus Group’s own expectations and this is testament to the collaborative approach by the Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) team and all involved to deliver what is a highly complex and technical project. Majid Al Futtaim have a reputation for pushing the boundaries and taking the lead in this region and this undertaking is testament to MAF’s progressive and ambitious approach.

Visitors have to move through the black entrance tunnel and will encounter a giant interactive screen 15 meters long and 5 meters high featuring life-size visuals of animal shapes. Six stations are positioned in front of the screen with directional sound targeting each screen as the scanner tracks the movement of the guest at each station. This experience called ‘Animal Pedia’ allows visitors to virtually reach out to an animal on screen and it responds with pop-up facts.

The next exhibition space, the ‘Earth Palette’, is a circular room 360 visual treat with a wealth of images of animals, landscapes and plants in a spectrum of colours. Guests place an item of colour onto a table in the middle of the room. A camera reads the colour item and scenes from nature in that colour fill the wall with 2.5 m high imagery. The lighting is designed with RGB to change colour and is digitally controlled to interface with the different settings and sculpture changes in each attractions. All MEP and engineering are required to be hidden and that design had to be taken into consideration so as not to interfere with projections.

All materials were carefully selected to ensure that the “green environment” is observed in accordance with LEED accreditation. This space makes it possible for visitors to migrate with elephants and experience how these huge mammals survive in the harsh habitat of the African continent; they are able to feel the vibration of their stamping feet as they are taken on a virtual African journey into the wilderness. The space comprises a concave wide screen on each side and a smaller trapezoidal screen on each end to create a near 360 degree environment.

Orbi Dubai’s center piece is a 35-metre wide screen, which plays custom-made BBC Earth films, amplified by two massive screens behind viewers to create a 360 degrees, fully immersive experience. There are two main challenges that were encountered by Bluehaus Group including air distribution and fire alarms. In the case of air distribution, care had to be taken so that it does not interfere with the effects (such as fog), and in terms of fire alarms, neither safety nor the audience experience could be sacrificed. In the two main theatres (i.e. ‘Meet the Komodo Theatre’ and ‘Earth Theatre’), Bluehaus Group designed displacement ventilation to minimize air-movement from interfering with the fog effects. From the heat of the Dubai desert, visitors can experience the chilling temperatures of Mount Kenya at -25°C. This multi-part experience takes the guest who dares, into freezing polar environments where they experience the sensation of Antarctic cold and blizzard conditions. The space is equipped with real-time thermal images of visitors as they react to the freezing polar conditions, which are all displayed on a monitor.