BECOME THE FACE OF THE OLYMPICS

Over 150,000 visitors to Sochi 2014 Winter Games will have their faces 3D scanned and recreated on the incredible transforming façade of the MegaFon Olympic Pavilion, designed by British architect Asif Khan.

For the past year Asif Khan has been working on a 2000 m2 Olympic pavilion and landscape for MegaFon, one of the largest Russian telecommunications companies and a general partner of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games.

Khan's structure, sited atthe Olympic Parkentrance, is designed to function like a huge pin screen. Its facade is made up of11,000 actuators, which transform the building’s skin into a three-dimensional portrait of each visitor’s face.

The concept is to give everyone the opportunity to become the face of the Olympics. It is a monument for the digital age.

Anastasia Orkina, MegaFonChief Marketing Officer comments: “The Sochi Olympics motto of our company is: “Make your own history”. These Games are our national heritage. And those thousands of faces on this architectural canvas will make contribution to this legacy by drawing a united portrait of Russian sports fans and supporters. Our Olympic Pavilion is not just a remarkable work of architecture, but a very important metaphor of the unity of individuals. It will bring people together.”

The pavilion’s façade will display up to three eight-metre-high faces at a time for a period of 20 seconds each, and anyone visiting the games can participate by visiting the 3D photo booths within the pavilion and having their face digitally scanned.

In addition 3D photo booths were sited at MegaFon retail stores around Russiato allow those who can’t attend the games to also have a presence there - a physical avatar.

Asif Khan comments: "I’m inspired by the way the world is changing around us and how architecture can respond to it. ‘Selfies’ and ‘emoticons’ have become our shorthand for communicating in the digital age; my instinct was to create a piece of architecture for Sochi which could be monumental yet open to that immediacy”.

After a scan has been made, the 3D image will be processed and fed to 11,000 mechanical actuators within the pavilion’s facade behind a stretchy fabric membrane. Each actuator can be extended by up to two metres, which allows it to define three-dimensional form at architectural scale. There is an RGB-LED light at the tip of each, making it possible to precisely calculate the position of every pixel and render the output of the facade in colour.

The system will take approximately one minute to calculate a three-dimensional model from the five individual pictures taken in the photo booths.

"The difficulty in our case was the development of a system that would meet Asif’s requirements of the project in relation to speed, usability and image quality. The process will be as fast and simple as using a commercial photo booth,” said Valentin Spiess, the CEO of Swiss engineering firm iart AG, and who Khan worked closely with on the pavilion's actuated facade design.

The MegaFon pavilion will remain in place for the duration of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games 2014 in Sochi, Russia.

The Swiss firm iart has engineered a kinetic facade for London-based architect Asif Khan’s MegaFaces pavilion at the entrance tothe Sochi Olympic Park. The project was commissioned by MegaFon, one of Russia’slargest telecom companies and a general sponsor of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.

The kinetic facade conceived by Asif Khan and engineered by iartis transformable in three dimensions to recreate the faces of visitors to Khan’s pavilion, a 2,000 m² cube. Facial impressions are relayed via 3D scans made in photo booths located within the building. Formed by 11,000 actuators, the resulting portraits – each eight metres tall – appear on the side of the building, three at a time. This key feature of the building has been likened to a digital, architectural Mount Rushmore. The faces that emerge from the side of the pavilion are magnified to be 3500% larger than life.

Technologies of this kind have never before been used for such a large-scale project. Khan and iart have in effect created the world’s first three-dimensionally actuated large-scale LED screen.

Valentin Spiess, CEO at iart, comments: ‘Each of the 11,000 actuators carries a translucent sphere at its tip that contains an RGB-LED light. The actuators are connected in a bidirectional system which makes it possible to control each one individually and, at the same time, also report its exact position back to the system. Each actuator acts as one pixel within the entire facade and can extend as much as up to two metresas part of a three-dimensional shape or change colour as part of an image or video that is simultaneously displayed on the facade.’

‘The challenge in developing the 3D photo booths was to build a system that would meet the requirements of the project with respect to speed, usability and image quality. The scanning process needed to be as fast and simple as using a commercial photo booth, while generating 3D models that are suitable for display on the facade.’

In realising this project, iart has once again proven itself as an interdisciplinary partner with profound engineering expertise. After having successfully collaborated on Coca-Cola's Beatbox Pavilion for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, this is the second joint project between Asif Khan and iart.

Khan comments: ‘For thousands of years people have used portraiture to record their history on the landscape, buildings and through public art. This has particular resonance in Russia. I’m inspired by the way the world is changing around us and how architecture can respond to it. “Selfies”, “emoticons”, “Facebook” and “FaceTime”have become universal shorthand for communicating in the digital age. My instinct was to try and harness that immediacy in the form of sculpture; to turn the everyday moment into something epic. I’ve been thinking of this as a kind of digital platform to express emotion, at the scale of architecture.’

Ivan Tavrin, CEO of MegaFon, comments: ‘The two most important components of our company are high-tech innovations and people – more than 66 million clients across Russia. Our idea was to combine these two components in the MegaFaces pavilion concept, and I reckon that we were successful. A very complicated, technologically challenging installation enables us to realise our creative ideas and gives everyone the opportunity to become a part of the great Olympic history.’