Every two years, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) convenes Understanding Risk — a global forum bringing together governments, scientists, financiers, and practitioners working on disaster and climate risk. The 2024 edition—hosted in Himeji, Japan—brought together thousands of delegates from around the world. ULTRA Studio designed the GFDRR pavilion for the forum — the organization's home base at the conference, where attendees from across the conference came to meet, relax, and connect between sessions.
We were given a directive to feature GFDRR's thematic areas and partnerships, but no fixed copy. We mined GFDRR.org to distill the organization's global scope into copy that could be absorbed in a walk-by or a ten-minute conversation. The design had to work around live monitors, standing meetings, and quiet reading; QR codes stitched through the walls let a curious visitor go deeper on any theme from their own phone.
