Iron Event and Happening Design · 2026
2025 Kaohsiung XR Dreamland Exhibition
by Fundesign.tv
- A' Design Award 2026 Iron Winner in Event and Happening Design
- Awarded April 15, 2026
- CLIENT: Kaohsiung film archive
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 6,965
- Verification code A9E8E72D89 · Verify this award
About 2025 Kaohsiung XR Dreamland Exhibition
2025 Kaohsiung XR Dreamland is an exhibition design created for an immersive film program in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The layout covers about 1,000 square meters and holds 22 experience booths measuring 3 to 12 square meters each. Every booth extends the virtual content of its own program into physical form, while a shared future retro theme links the booths as individual cinema halls. Streamlined curves, mirrored acrylic and transparent LED panels shape a glowing entrance and a vintage ticket booth. The route guides visitors gradually from reality into virtual worlds.
The 2025 Kaohsiung XR Dreamland Exhibition by Fundesign.tv situates itself within the expanding tradition of immersive experiential design for cultural and technological events, a practice that has evolved significantly from world exposition architecture through twentieth-century themed entertainment environments to contemporary digital-physical hybrid installations. This entrance structure demonstrates sophisticated understanding of threshold design as both functional wayfinding element and symbolic gateway, employing a visual vocabulary that synthesizes multiple historical references into a coherent contemporary statement. The compositional achievement lies in the precise calibration of symmetry and hierarchy, establishing immediate visual clarity while rewarding sustained attention with ornamental richness in the scrollwork detailing, bulb arrangement patterns, and neon geometric motifs adorning the flanking columns. The chromatic sophistication reveals itself in the deliberate complementary relationship between warm amber theatrical lighting evoking vintage cinema marquees and entertainment venues, and cool cyan-blue neon suggesting technological innovation and digital futurism, a pairing that creates maximum optical intensity while symbolically bridging nostalgic cultural memory and forward-looking experiential possibility. Technical facility appears evident in the integration of multiple illumination technologies, structural elements, and digital display surfaces into a unified architectural statement that reads clearly from distance while offering layered complexity upon approach. The work engages thematically with concepts of invitation, transformation, and passage between states of experience, the threshold as both literal architectural element and metaphorical crossing point from everyday consciousness into curated extraordinary encounter. The structure's theatrical presentation and generous scale suggest an understanding of public event design as participatory performance, where architecture functions not merely as shelter or branding but as stage set establishing emotional register and experiential expectation. The incorporation of animated figural imagery visible through the central portal suggests content richness awaiting beyond the threshold, employing techniques of preview and anticipation familiar from carnival midways, cinema lobbies, and contemporary retail theater. Iconographic references to golden age entertainment architecture position the installation within lineages of popular cultural experience, while the integration of contemporary digital screens and XR terminology signals participation in emerging technological paradigms of mixed reality and extended experience platforms. One might consider how this gateway structure negotiates between accessibility and spectacle, creating visual magnetism that draws diverse audiences while maintaining legible navigation, or how the design balances branded identity communication with atmospheric immersion, serving multiple simultaneous functions as wayfinding device, marketing communication, aesthetic experience, and symbolic threshold promising transformation through participation.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Kaohsiung’s remarkable journey from a heavy-industry port city to Asia’s XR innovation hub is the core inspiration behind XR DREAMLAND. Since 2017, when the Kaohsiung Film Festival launched Taiwan’s first VR program, the city has embraced immersive storytelling with bold vision and passion. At the Pier-2 Art Center, it established the permanent VR FILM LAB, which has grown into one of the largest XR immersive platforms in Asia, shaping Kaohsiung’s cultural identity around creative technology.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Within an approximately 1,000-square-meter space, the exhibition features 22 XR experience booths, ranging from 3 to 12 square meters. Each booth is independently designed by physically extending its specific virtual XR content into the real world. Unified under a central Future Retro theater framework, these varied spatial installations are cohesively presented as individual cinema halls.
- Tags
- XR, DREAMLAND, Film Festival, Kaohsiung, Pier 2 Art Zone, VR, MR, AR, fundesign
- Production Technology
- The design team employs immersive narrative to bring the Crossborder Reincarnation concept to life. Utilizing a Future Retro aesthetic, the spatial execution contrasts a nostalgic exterior—such as the vintage ticket booth—with avant-garde, high-tech exhibition interiors. By juxtaposing these distinct temporal elements, the architecture functions as a dimensional portal. This curated pacing guides visitors from reality into the XR realm, establishing design as a language of the future.
- Design Challenge
- The primary internal challenge was synthesizing diverse cultural perspectives into a unified Future Retro narrative. They addressed this through deep interviews, digital collaboration tools, and frequent meetings, ensuring local creative concepts were respected. Externally, technical hardware constraints were significant. They utilized 16-panel transparent LED arrays to create a ship bridge entrance. This achieved spatial permeability, allowing visitors to glimpse the XR realm while maintaining a high-tech aesthetic that balanced production limitations with immersive design.
- Project Duration
- The Kaohsiung film festival xr dreamland exhibition was held at Warehouse P3 of the Pier-2 Art Center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, from October 10 to October 26, 2025.
- Operation Flow
- To maximize physical presence, the design focused on creating a visually striking entrance and ticket booth. This strategic architectural attraction served as a high-conversion funnel, guiding visitors from curiosity to entry. As the primary touchpoint, the Future Retro facade’s captivating aesthetic drove foot traffic and directly translated visitor engagement into a record-breaking box office performance of over one million dollars, surpassing all previous festival records.
- Research
- Our research profiled Pier2 visitors and XR enthusiasts to design a seamless transition between realities. They employed trend analysis, benchmarking Tesla’s unique coffee shop for its blend of futuristic aesthetics and functionality. By observing visitor flows and preferences, They identified that a future retro style effectively lowers technological barriers. Results proved this design language invites exploration, turning space into a communal interface. This directly contributed to record-breaking attendance, validating that intuitive design makes complex tech accessible.
- Inspiration
- Inspired by the concept of Future Vintage, the design reinterprets the romantic futurism of the 1950s to 1970s: streamlined curves, metallic gleam, and cosmic aspirations. From the glowing entrance to the dramatic ticket booth and screening area, nostalgia and avant-garde aesthetics intertwine. Grand light gates, retro sci-fi details, transparent LEDs, and mirrored acrylic create a theatrical atmosphere, while flowing pathways gradually blur the line between physical and virtual realms.