How do you build an immersive room that can be reused, resized and moved from venue to venue? Here's what went into the Show Pod: the brief we set ourselves, the search for the right materials, and why our workshop is in Umm Al Quwain.
Before the Show Pod told its first story, it took more than two years of research, testing and rethinking. Most of that work happened in a warehouse in Umm Al Quwain that has become the heart of See Play Dream: part workshop, part lab and part showroom.
We started with three rules.
It had to be reusable. Every part should be used again and again, for story after story, rather than built for one event and thrown away.
It had to be modular. Brands and venues come in all sizes, so the pod needed to grow and shrink, with screens from 3 × 3 m to 6 × 6 m, from the same set of parts.
It had to travel easily. The pod needed to pack down, move between venues and go up again in three days.
"Each of those rules on its own is manageable," says Bahram Pourghadiri, co-founder of See Play Dream. "Getting all three at once, in something that still feels magical when you step inside, is where the real work was."
A room that welcomes the public has to be safe, so every material had to be fire-rated. That narrowed the options a lot. Materials that were light, strong and fire-rated often didn't take projection well, or weren't built to be put up and taken down again and again.
We researched and tested a wide range of materials and travelled to Germany and China to find the right suppliers, as well as using suppliers from the UK and UAE. It took longer than we hoped, but it means the pod is safe, durable and made to last.
When it came to choosing a base, Umm Al Quwain made sense for several reasons.
Warehouse space is newer and more affordable, which let us take a space big enough to build the pod at full size.
It's close to Dubai, one of the world's biggest event markets, so the pod is never far from our clients.
And it's surrounded by a strong supply chain. Metal fabrication, powder coating and laser cutting are all nearby, so we can design a part, have it made and test it within days instead of weeks.
The space gives us room to keep experimenting. We can try new technologies, test new kinds of interaction and build our own mix of creative tech based on what our clients need.
It's also where we learned one of our biggest lessons: interaction has to serve the story. "It's easy to make a room react," says Bahram. "It's much harder to make it react in a way that means something. Having our own space lets us try, fail and try again until it feels right."
Without it, we couldn't keep improving the design or the experience. With it, every new client brief is a chance to make the Show Pod better.
The warehouse is also our showroom. Brands, venues and agencies can book a private demo, step inside the Show Pod and see what their story could look like.
