As a continuation of Mahalla: Urban Rural Living, Giga built a multi-user VR installation in Dubai that reunites two traces: 3D scans of mahallas that no longer exist, and the architectural structure first shown at the Venice Biennale.
Visitors could navigate the space using virtual reality headsets, while an external LED wall displayed cinematic views of the environment alongside the avatars of those inside. Point-cloud scans stayed grainy and unfinished, treated as material rather than imagery, while the Biennale structure worked as a steady scaffold.
What began as documentation became a temporary commons. Visitors entered together, walking a shared fragment of a disappeared neighborhood. It was a multiplayer experience: those in the physical space could reunite in the virtual environment and explore it side by side.
In a city built on acceleration, the installation offered a quieter pace—a room to stand inside what is gone.