OLYMPIC PAVILION FOR MEGAFON, THE GENERAL PARTNER OF THE 2014 WINTER OLYMPIC AND
Category
A01. Innovation
Entrant Company
AXIS Moscow, RUSSIA
Advertising Agency
AXIS Moscow, RUSSIA
Advertising Agency 2
ASIF KHAN London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Agency
IART Basel, SWITZERLAND
Credits
Name
Company
Position
Asif Khan
ASIF KHAN STUDIO
Project Author/Creative Director
Alsu Khairutdinova
AXIS
Client Service Director
Valentin Spiess
IART
Ceo/Interactive Engineer
Anastasia Orkina
MEGAFON
Strategic Marketing Director
Galina Kukina
MEGAFON
Megafaces Project Manager Part Of Strategic Marketing Team)
Polina Sophie Shevskaya
AXIS
Account Manager
Dmitry Ivashkin
AXIS
Construction Manager
Mathis Meyer
IART
Project Manager/Interactive Engineer
Sara Griffith
ASIF KHAN STUDIO
Project Architect
Peter Vaughan
ASIF KHAN STUDIO
Project Architect
Dominik Seitz
IART
Project Manager/Interactive Engineer
Scott Eaton
Digital Sculpture Consultant
Julia Vasilyeva
MEGAFON
Head Of Olympic Project Part Of Strategic Marketing Team)
The Brief
As general partner for the 2014 XXII Olympic and XI Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi MegaFon built the entire telecommunications infrastructure of the Sochi Olympics to ensure that all visitors had the constant connectivity they required to create their own history of the Games via social channels.
Therefore, Prior to the Olympics MegaFon launched a five-month long “Create Your Own Olympic History” campaign. It encouraged people to make the Olympics a very personal experience with MegaFon’s mobile internet. Company’s pavilion was meant to became the pinnacle of this experience and give everyone an opportunity to turn their Olympic Moment into something truly epic.
Despite none of the materials being available in Russia, this technically complex project took only 12 months to move from initial sketches to the most high profile corporate activity of the Olympics.
2,000 sq m Pavilion featured the world’s first large scale LED kinetic façade, becoming a digital Mount Rushmore. Customers around Russia and visitors to the Olympic Park had their faces photographed and transferred to the Pavilion façade. Designed to function like a huge pin screen that could extend out to a depth of up to two metres, the façade of the Pavilion was made up of over 11,000 actuators and was capable of rendering 8 metres tall by 6 metres wide 3D images. Morphing every 50 seconds, three faces were featured at any one time, enlarged by 3,500%. The CPP (creative positioning pipeline) was a 3D processing engine which ran automatically to algorithmically position, scaled and re-light the raw scan data in a virtual photo booth to elicit the greatest recognisability and emotional impact from the real world facade compositions. It's effect was akin to a digital tromp l'oeil effect, the first of its kind.
This technically complex project took only 12 months to move from initial architect’s sketches to the most innovative and engaging brand experience of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Acknowledged as the best Olympic pavilion of 2014, MegaFaces was the runaway success of the Games. More than 400 news articles in the Russian media and over 600 articles in international media established the pavilion as one of the iconic symbols of Sochi 2014.
MegaFaces Pavilion was an inspiring example of how the elements of the digital age can find their physical embodiment. In addition, we believe that this technology breakthrough will encourage young architects and artists to investigate the potential for permanent shape-changing buildings in the future. After the Games the Pavilion will be reassembled in a public area in Moscow to serve as a flagship for MegaFon’s innovation and outstanding customer experience.
The Pavilion and its kenetic facade might also become a unique medium for selected contemporary artists and a distinctive art-platform in itself.