Why the UAE requires a different immersive mindset  

The UAE has seen rapid investment in cultural infrastructure over the past decade, with museums, expos, and destination districts playing a central role in economic and cultural diversification. As the region opens itself to the world, local culture, history, and identity have come to the fore.

Dubai has established itself as a global stopover hub, serving travellers moving between hemispheres and acting as a gateway to Africa and Southeast Asia. In 2025, the city welcomed close to 20 million international overnight visitors, alongside a significant expatriate population drawn by rapid development across multiple industries. At the same time, Emirati culture remains deeply rooted, shaped by values of hospitality, generosity, respect, and strong intergenerational family ties.

For immersive experience designers, this creates a unique audience: local, regional, and global visitors encountering a place that is both outward looking and grounded in tradition. Designing for this context requires cultural fluency rather than surface level adaptation, and an understanding of how values, history, and ambition intersect in everyday life.

As Wētā Workshop Head of Creative Services Rik Athorne notes, “We’ve found the best work comes from listening and observing first. Every culture has their own stories, values, customs, and way of seeing the world. When you’re able to take the time and learn to understand the people you work with, you can begin a creative and cultural journey together that ends with creating unique projects that genuinely belong to the place and people they’re intended for."

For Alif, the challenge wasn’t just storytelling, but coherence and connection. The pavilion set out to take visitors on a sweeping journey “from the Silk Road to the edges of space”, compressing centuries of exploration, innovation, and movement into a single visitor experience.

Our answer was cinematic, drawing on decades of building worlds for film: a clear narrative structure, characters at monumental scale, and emotion prioritised over linear chronology. Crucially, cultural grounding came from the story itself rather than  decorative motifs, through choices that honoured  intellectual and historical contributions of the Arab world.

“The experience is anchored by the Giants of Mobility, Ibn Battuta, Ibn Majid, and Al Bakri — figures whose work shaped global exploration and knowledge exchange,” says Wētā Workshop Supervising Creative Director Andrew Thomas. “Framed through the perspective of a young Bedouin girl, the story connects ancient trade routes to future space travel, linking past, present, and future in a way that is specific, respectful, and culturally meaningful.”

Physical storytelling, the craft at the heart of Wētā Workshop, anchors the experience. Monumental, lifelike sculptures and richly detailed environments create a tangible sense of presence — their scale, texture, and materiality allowing visitors to feel history as something inhabited rather than abstract. Digital layers, developed with our partners at Magnopus, support this physicality, guiding pacing and transitions without overwhelming the space.

The key lesson from Alif: start with narrative ambition, ground it in culture, and let technology earn its place by strengthening the human story.

“The lesson from Alif was clear,” says Wētā Workshop Creative Producer Jason Aldous. “Narrative ambition only works when culture is treated as structure, not decoration.”

Mixed reality as an invisible design tool

Decades of experience working with filmmakers have shaped how we approach immersive storytelling, combining narrative, physical making and close collaboration with technology partners. Narrative clarity, pacing, and emotional rhythm remain central, whatever the medium. Technology earns its place only when it contributes meaningfully to the visitor experience.

A common mistake is adopting a “tech‑first” mindset, where investment is driven by novelty rather than narrative need. In contrast, mixed reality works best when it quietly supports transitions, encourages movement, and deepens emotional engagement, whether through responsive audio, subtle visual cues, or layered storytelling that feels intuitive rather than instructional.

Thomas adds, “When employing mixed reality techniques, you always have to keep the narrative at the heart of what you’re designing. The technology should enhance the story, not sit centre stage.”

For audiences in the UAE — where physical presence, hospitality, and craft carry deep meaning — this balance is particularly important. The most successful experiences are those where digital and physical elements work together so naturally that no explanation is required.

The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi presented a very different immersive challenge. Rather than compressing history into a single arc, the museum invites visitors to engage with deep time, from the origins of the universe to life today.

Located in the Saadiyat Cultural District and designed by Mecanoo, the museum functions as both a public destination and a scientific research institution. Wētā Workshop was engaged as part of a wider project team to design and fabricate more than 300 hyper-realistic models and dioramas across multiple galleries, ranging from a 15-metre Shastasaurus to insects measured in millimetres.

In this context, physical realism becomes the primary narrative device. Scale, posture, texture, and surface detail are carriers of meaning. Visitors are encouraged to observe closely, understanding evolution, extinction, and interdependence through attention rather than instruction.

Scientific accuracy was key. Every reconstruction was developed in collaboration with paleontologists, researchers, and curators through extensive review cycles built into the production programme from the outset. As the project evolved, our scope expanded to include entire environments, such as the Tasmania biome and an outdoor wadi populated by bronze sculptures of fauna native to the Arabian Peninsula, rooting a global narrative within a regional ecological context.

As Athorne observes, “The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi demonstrates that impact does not always come from technological intensity. In some contexts, restraint is what allows meaning to surface.” 

Cultural Intelligence is a professional skill, not an instinct  

Cultural intelligence is a core professional skill, one that begins with listening before design. On Alif, this meant embedding cultural grounding into narrative structure rather than applying it as surface treatment.

This approach is consistent across our work globally. In Aotearoa New Zealand, for example, the Pounamu Pathway was developed through a deep partnership with local iwi  Poutini Ngāi Tahu, weaving local stories across interconnected sites on the West Coast.

Aldous adds, “in both contexts, the process was the same: collaborating with those who hold knowledge, building relationships, and allowing lived experience to shape the experience.”

Across regions, the throughline is clear. Cultural intelligence is built through trust, humility, and collaboration, ensuring experiences feel true to place and meaningful to the communities they represent.

Audience expectations are rising. Visitors are seeking authentic encounters with culture that go beyond surface level representation, and the UAE is increasingly setting benchmarks for what immersive experiences can achieve.

Since Expo 2020 Dubai, development of new cultural districts and entertainment offerings has continued across the Emirates. For immersive designers, this signals both opportunity and responsibility to create experiences that are ambitious, informed, and worthy of the stories they carry.

Three principles underpin how our Immersive Experiences team works in the UAE and beyond, from first conversations through install, delivery and handover: 

• Start with story. Ground the experience in cultural narratives, values, and context rather than technology.
• Invest early in cultural intelligence. This allows design decisions that respect local meaning, rather than defaulting to surface level adaptation.
• Let mixed reality play a supporting role. Technology should amplify culture, not overshadow it.

Find out more about Wētā Workshop Immersive Experiences here.