The pavilion's entire 218 x 6 metre façade was conceived as a single continuous display surface, embedding more than 60,000 individually addressable LEDs across its structure. Content was mapped to follow the building's contours, letting imagery move seamlessly across seams and angles rather than sitting on a flat screen.

Ned Kahn's flip-title elements added a kinetic, physical layer to the digital surface, blurring the line between architecture and media. The result reads as sculpture by day and as a luminous, data-driven skin by night.

As visitors approach the Africa Pavilion after dark, the entire building appears to breathe: waves of colour ripple across its LED-clad surface, echoing patterns and motifs drawn from across the African continent. Guests circle the structure to take in different sequences from different angles, the animation shifting as they move.

By day, the same façade reveals its physical relief — a textured, sculptural presence that anchors the pavilion within the Expo Zaragoza site long before the lights come up.

Expo Zaragoza needed a pavilion for its Africa exhibit that would stand out among dozens of national pavilions and read as a landmark from across the fairground, day and night.

The challenge was to turn an entire 218-metre building façade into a functioning media surface — integrating tens of thousands of LEDs into the architecture itself without compromising the structure, while creating content flexible enough to run continuously throughout the six-month Expo.