Sochi 2014: Russian telecommunications company MegaFon to Demonstrate Fans’ Faces Enlarged by 3500 Times

Sochi, Russia, 2014-2-7 — /travelprnews.com/ — The MegaFon pavilion that belongs to one of the biggest Russian telecommunications companies has every opportunity to become the most notable pavilion at the Sochi Olympics. It resembles Mount Rushmore, but in the digital era. Its facade is comprised of 11,000 actuators, which transform the building’s facade into a three-dimensional portrait of each visitor’s face. Three faces, each 6×8 meters in size can be displayed on the wall simultaneously.

170 thousand guests will be able to see their faces enlarged by 3500 times. They are the guests of the Olympic park and the fans from across Russia, who participated in MegaFon’s “Faces of the Olympics” promo event. Everyone who is in Sochi during the Olympics can become part of Olympic history. All it takes is passing through a very simple scanning procedure at the MegaFon pavilion.

The idea of the pavilion belongs to Asif Khan, a young, but already well-known architect from London. One of his most famous and striking projects is the Coca-Cola Beatbox Pavilion at the London Games of 2012.

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

Asif Khan, the author and architect of the project: “I am inspired by the world changing around us and how architecture can respond to that. Selfies’ and ‘emoticons’ have become our shorthand approach for communicating in the digital age. We share every moment with the world! Our instinct was to create a piece of architecture for Sochi that could be monumental. For us, the MegaFon pavilion is not only a piece of architecture, but a digital platform for sharing emotions”.

The MegaFon pavilion will be based in the Olympic park during the XXII Olympic and XI Paralympics of 2014 in Sochi.
MegaFaces facts.
The size of the pavilion – 2000 square meters.
There are 6 photo booths at the pavilion, which are open for scanning everyone.
5 photos taken from different angles are necessary to create a 3D portrait.
3 faces of the size of 6×8 meters can be demonstrated on the façade at one time.
The weight of the façade is 170 tons:
•         105 tons – the weight of the actuators
•         65 tons – the weight of the foundation construction.

The façade consists of:
•         11 000 telescopic actuators
•         160 modules, each consisting of 128/64 actuators

The actuators are made of:
•         50 kilometers of aluminium profiles
•         190 kilometers of synthetic fiber cables
•         110 kilowatts of RGB-LED light
•         187 000 ball-bearings

The entire system includes the photo booths made of:
•         100 processors, with 200 GB RAM in total
•         50 Tb of driver memory

Project Team:
The conception, design and architecture: Asif Khan (UK)
Technological development: iart (Switzerland)
Project Management: AXIS agency (Russia)

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