Saudi Arabia’s Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka has won the Bureau International des Expositions Gold Award for Architecture and Landscape for self-built pavilions larger than 1,500 square metres.
The announcement of Official Participant Awards was made on the eve of the closing of the Expo – the Award was decided by an international jury composed of nine experts in a range of relevant fields.
Malcolm Reading Consultants (MRC) ran the invited competition for the project under the leadership of the Kingdom’s Architecture and Design Commission, a division of the Ministry of Culture.
The competition needed to identify an outstanding multi-disciplinary team to design a spectacular and immersive pavilion that would showcase the Kingdom’s unique culture and heritage. A key challenge was to communicate how Saudi Arabia’s flair for innovation, creativity and enterprise enables it to meet global challenges.
MRC worked with cultural consultants to develop a vision for the Pavilion that responded to the overall Osaka theme of Designing Future Society for Our Lives. MRC curated the selection process from which the winning design team and concept was chosen.
The successful design by Foster + Partners presented the story of Saudi Arabia’s rich cultural heritage, its national transformation, and its global impact. It recalled the organic shapes, spaces and layouts of traditional Saudi villages and answered the competition brief with a highly sustainable pavilion that was designed in line with the Saudi Green Initiative.
The aim of the design was to create a journey of discovery focused on cultural exchange and sharing knowledge between visitors from all around the world and the people of Saudi Arabia.
The Pavilion enabled a journey of exploration transporting the visitor to Saudi Arabia’s towns and villages, with a central courtyard that embodied a sense of calm during the day and provided excitement and entertainment during the evening. Authentic not just to Saudi Arabia but also to its context in Osaka, this was a space that celebrated human experiences.
Over six months, the Pavilion hosted hundreds of public events and welcomed more than three million visitors.
