Animation played on the Burj Khalifa

For Dubai Shopping Festival 2021, I collaborated with frequent collaborators Rakan Ghresi and Mrinal Sunil to create an animation for the Burj Khalifa. At over 828 metres tall, with more than 1 million LED pixels across its façade, designing for it was very different from creating for a conventional screen. We had to work around the building’s geometry, perspective and formatting, while figuring much of the technical process out on the go.

For certain sequences, we wanted the animation to actively interact with the architecture rather than simply play across it. We designed elements to follow the building’s tapering forms and create the illusion that the visuals were emerging from, wrapping around or moving through the structure, making the experience feel more immersive. With less than 3 days to create the entire piece, it became a race against time, balancing animation, design and technical problem solving simultaneously.