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Islamic Solidarity Games 2017

Sports

WICreations

Entertainment engineering specialist WICREATIONS specified and fabricated two large and spectacular set pieces – a water fountain and a Tree of Life- for the highly acclaimed Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games, a multi-national, multi-sport event staged in Baku, Azerbaijan from 12 to 22 May 2017. WI’s team, project managed by Yves Vervloet, was working for Betty Productions Ltd. who co-ordinated all the creative and technical production elements for the ceremonies on behalf of the Islamic Games Operations Committee.

The ceremonies both took place in the 70,000 seater Baku National Stadium, a venue already familiar to the WI team after their ground-breaking work there for the 2015 European Games. The water vessel and the tree – integral parts of production designer Thanassis Demiris’s visual treatment for the two ceremonies - were realised and constructed at WI’s HQ in Heist-op-den-Berg, Belgium over a two month period. Approximately 60 tonnes of kit was road-freighted to Baku on five trucks.

WATER FOUNTAIN

The 8 metre diameter water bowl was an essential part of the Opening Ceremony (OC) set and narrative.

The Games were officially opened by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev amidst an array of dancers, musicians, fireworks, horses, camels and donkeys. The teams of the 2800 athletes were led onto the field-of-play by women carrying water collected from around Azerbaijan … which was poured into the massive bowl.

Weight calculations were crucial, as the loading data for the stage perimeter at the point where the bowl was located was 17 tonnes, so the piece, complete with water, could not exceed that.

The base was constructed from a 200 mm high rigid steel frame with custom steel-flanged castors … which alone weighed 1.7 tonnes. It was designed to take 15 tonnes of water in tanks below and still be manually movable (into final stage position) via a pair of 30 metre steel track beams that were integral to the stage structure.

The tracks were built by Stage One Technologies from the UK – who delivered the stage - to WI’s spec.

Sitting on top of the steel frame was a 4mm aluminium centre section housing all the pumps, pipes and connections. This was covered with a removable aluminium hatch to conceal all the technical apparatus.

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Four small hatches were made in the middle of this centre section which could be opened during the filling process – to relieve the vertical water pressure as the tank was filled.

The bottom of the bowl itself was made up of 16 x 3D cut Styrofoam segments reinforced with an aluminium framework and were fixed on to the aluminium centrepiece.

To achieve the required authentic hammered copper finish, Yves and the team conducted several tests before producing a laser-cut plastic plate surface which was glued onto the exterior of the 16 segments making up the bowl.

Each piece was then sprayed with a 4 mm Polyurea hot spray coating (as used in swimming pools). The heavy viscosity of the hot spray gave the authentic rounded hammered look on the outside and a smooth interior surface … just as the creative team had requested. “The result was absolutely perfect,” commented Yves with some satisfaction.

The final copper metallic finish was sprayed onto the water fountain on site in Baku.

When it came to designing the pump section they needed to achieve three main effects – a swirl, 16 x 3 metre high outer jets and a 10 metre high central jet.

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It took 6 days to build the water vessel on site in Baku. The empty weight of the final piece was around 3 tonnes, and 12 tonnes of water were utilised for the performance.

It was pushed into show position – via the 30m tracks – manually by the stage crew. Once located, three hatches opened in the stage to allow the crew to hook up the 7 Harting connectors to power the FX pumps and the two hoses to commence the water filling.

Closing Tree of Life

For the stunning Closing Ceremony, the stage set was laid out in a grid referencing the geometric designs and precision that are characteristic of Islamic art and traditional Azerbaijan carpets. The water bowl was used again – reassembled for a second time … and right beside it, centre stage, was an impressive 27 metre tall Tree of Life.

The crown of the steel tree was 18 metres in diameter and its base measured 12 metres. It involved approximately 2000 bolted connections, weighed a mighty 25 tonnes and needed 22 tonnes of ballast to ensure stability.

The bespoke base was constructed from elements of WI’s standard rental towers system with some special adaptations.

The tree was designed in 8 sections, horizontally divided so they could be craned up and fixed on top of one another. Each section was in turn divided into 12 frames that also bolted together.

On site, it was assembled in two shifts. The first one saw the base frame of the tree built, and the upper crown complete with all the branches. The leaves were supplied by Stage One and they alone required a 24 hour shift for attaching to the upper crown!

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In the second shift, the WI team built the roots, trunk and the water vessel … and then oversaw the most challenging aspect of the tree build – the crane lift of the 8 tonne top section (upper crown) .. complete with leaves.

It had to be completed in one lift, a truly impressive manoeuvre with some seriously expert crane handling, which saw many dropped jaws on site … even from the most seasoned technical and production personnel!

After that, the fabric materials and finishing were applied to the trunk.

The entire CC set was installed in just 36 hours, following the end of the final Athletics event on 20 May.

The CC was energised by a cast of over 1500 volunteers, with music performed by over 100 musicians featuring traditional and contemporary pieces written by Azerbaijani composers and six music acts also helped celebrate the 10 days of excellent sport.

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The OC and CC were created by Betty Productions Ltd – led by director and executive producer, Catherine Ugwu and artistic director Nathan M. Wright. Theproduction designer was Thanassis Demiris,lighting was designed by Adam Bassett and thevisual content director was Richard Lindsay.

As a company, WICREATIONS was extremely proud to be part of these two world class events, which united some of the best and most creative international technical talents available.

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