BAPS Hindu Mandir

BAPS Hindu Mandir is the first traditional stone temple in the UAE.
Made entirely from pink sandstone that originates from Rajasthan and white marble from Italy, around 5,000 artisans worked on the construction of the Abu Dhabi temple over the course of five years.

Built on land donated by the then Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the grand opening took place in the presence of His Holiness Mahant Swami Maharaj, the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, and the UAE’s Minister of Tolerance, Sheikh bin Mubarak Al Nahyan. The venue has attracted more than two million visitors from across the world to-date.

Given the great amount of effort that has gone into the project, BAPS brought the story of the temple’s construction to visitors, opting to create a complete 360-degree projection mapped space that serves as stop number one along the Hindu Mandir tour. Inside it plays “The Fairy Tale” Immersive Show daily, which has been brought to life through video projection and a cutting-edge surround sound experience.

“When visitors come and see this temple, they are in awe of the architecture and want to know more about the story and its history,” says BAPS Hindu Mandir director Pranav Desai. “That’s the reason for creating this beautiful immersive show. It educates visitors in detail on how the temple was constructed while also giving them a larger-than-life experience. Then when they move into the temple, they fully understand what they are witnessing.”
The in-the-round visuals that power the immersive show are delivered by a configuration of eight Christie 4K22-HS 22,500-lumens projectors hung from ceiling truss and covering the four walls, with a further 12 DWU15-HS 15,200-lumens projectors covering the floor. Vue AV worked closely with the Christie team on the projector design and implementation. Content is fed to the Christie units via a complex configuration of Aurura AV over IP transceivers and five Pixera one QUAD media servers. A in-room surround sound system augments the visual presentation.

The teams worked under very tight timelines to install the AV equipment.

“Due to timescales, everything came to fruition pretty quickly, in about six weeks,” Adrian Goulder, Vue AV, explains. “The design phase, of course, was a lot longer than that. Supporting the various AV teams on site with the installation and getting everything shipped in towards the Christmas season as well, added to the challenge.”

However, the teams rose to the challenge and the project was completed on schedule.

“Our experience working on this immersive show with Vue AV and Christie has been amazing, right from conception to delivery,” says Desai. “During the inauguration, they were physically present to make sure that everything ran smoothly, and during day-to-day operations, whenever we have any issues, if we raise a request to them and within a couple of hours they remotely connected and help us solve this issue. It is so easy to operate that our operational staff, our volunteers, can easily run the show, but we know that we have a backend support of this team and any point of time, if anything is required.”