Folies for the Olympic runner

Memory

Folie, from French = madness

Physical activity during sports causes significant stress that is expressed in human skin as deformations.

In the production of the forms of these folies, internal and external forces and conditions (function, relationship with the environment, etc.) act by deforming the envelope of these structures. Their scalar ambiguity generates a certain instability in their perception.

They are made up of an internal steel structure that acts as an internal skeleton for a series of audiovisual devices. The surrounding skin is made up of sheet metal pieces and “planar” type glass plates, with absolute surface continuity, creating a true reduction of the architectural body to a pure surface: “the interface”. This “recording surface” is conducive to converting the Follies into objects that transmit and receive information (pre-programmed or immediate) that, through projection screens, speakers, and rotating surfaces with changing colors, can translate the information into audiovisual codes.

The intense cultural and informational activity developed during the games causes a life cycle - a daily metamorphosis - determining alternating phases: open-closed, on-off, translucent-transparent; according to the time of day and the information processed. It could also change according to atmospheric phenomena: rain, fog, temperature, etc. The illuminated bars like torches, present in the upper part of the prototypes, bring the spirit of the games to each point of the Olympic corridor.

Only four models have been developed, although more sites have been chosen for their deployment. These nodes are remotely interconnected as information nodes along the Olympic corridor, and can receive and send data from anywhere along the Olympic corridor or around the world.

Note: During the execution of the preliminary project in 1997, the use of mobile communication devices was just beginning to be established throughout the world. Only in recent years, thanks to the rise of the Internet, have interactive devices come onto the market that could send and receive signals to the folies and allow community participation with them.

The project was for the 2008 Olympic Games. The jury, in 1997, did not fully understand the interaction…