From 1 July visitors are offered a look into the scientific work of CERN (the European Council for Nuclear Research) and its particle accelerator LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in Geneva. In order to communicate its complex themes, which are often difficult to grasp, CERN has installed a dazzling exhibition in its ‘Globe of Science and Innovation’: the dark, seemingly boundless ‘Universe of Particles’ with its shining blue spheres, which prove on closer examination to be show cases, interactive stations or seats. The miniature universe has been realised by the scenographers ATELIER BRÜCKNER together with the two media firms of iart interactive and tegoro solutions.

The exhibition ‘Universe of Particles’ extends over 450 square meters of a 27 meter- high dome-shaped pavilion that has stood in Geneva since 2004 and that was previously used at Swiss Expo 02. The pavilion, built from the wood used for Peter Zumthor’s Swiss pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover, was designed by Thomas Büchi and Hervé Dessimoz as the ‘Palace of Equilibrium’. Today it provides an arena for the interactive staging of complex scientific theories, experiments and research tools in order to make them comprehensible for different audiences. Carrying on from the conventional pictorial representation of atoms, all objects in the exhibition are round or spherical: the show cases, the seats with audio information, the interactive stations, the projectors’ cases and the centrally placed platform, which functions as a projection area.

Object Spheres – The Show Cases

Important objects drawn from CERN’s research are exhibited in the spherical show cases: parts from detectors, the first World Wide Web server, the first particle accelerator.

Ball Chairs with Sound

Five white hemispheres with black interiors provide an opportunity to sit down comfortably and to listen at one’s leisure to physicists from CERN, who each describe their experiments and their areas of specialization in their respective mother tongue. By activating buttons inserted in the inner wall, visitors can choose between English, German, French and Italian.

Interactive Spheres for 2D and 3D Content

Three different kinds of interactive spheres facilitate simple, playful access to the exhibition’s content. Through interaction, two and three-dimensional pictorial words can be dynamically resized: Earth can be reduced to a smaller format while nano worlds can be enlarged by means of renderings.

There is a round interactive table at which visitors can explore the functioning of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) particle accelerator concealed 100 meters underground. Different visitors can simultaneously open up different thematic fields or can slide them across the table’s surface to other people who are there.

The globe ‘Interactive Sphere’ – a more sophisticated version of a tool that iart interactive initially developed for the Paul Scherrer Institute – enables visitors intuitively to access globally relevant facts, such as worldwide cooperation initiatives and CERN’s history from 1949 to 2010. The themes are selected via small touch areas at the edge of the spherical vessel. The sphere’s surface changes according to how the sphere is rolled so that a completely formed Earth is suggested, the upper half of which looks out from the vessel. In reality, the surface is totally white and the images are created through an overhead projection. At certain points, which can be accessed by rolling the sphere, built-in sensors enable visitors to see fields of text or images that provide them with greater detail.

One completely new element is a spherical interface for two and three-dimensional pictorial worlds and text (the Interactive Ball), which, depending on the user’s navigation, seem to arrange themselves spatially in the ball. A field projected onto the translucent ball from the inside creates the illusion of an oval window offering a vista into the ball. A city spreads out into the ball’s depths, the universe opens up, heavenly bodies move towards the viewer. Navigation takes place by means of clearly recognisable interactive features, which appear in the projected picture and react to a light touch. In this way, the subject matter can be explored playfully and new knowledge can be acquired intuitively.

The Main Show – A Multimedia Show on the Big Bang

Thanks to an all-encompassing film/sound/light choreography, the exhibition space itself is transformed into an exhibit and a medium. In a rhythmical sequence, the interactive stations descend, sound fills the room, wall and floor areas start pulsating under the impact of the projected images. The purpose of this display is to bring visitors emotionally closer to the phenomenon of the Big Bang.

The Content Management System

Thanks to the specially designed content management system, the content can be easily maintained and extended. It automatically acquires the correct format. The central platform even offers an opportunity to capture real particle collisions in real time images that can be very effectively presented.

For further information or images please contact Anna Pfeiffer

The Swiss pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai is covered by a semi-transparent façade that uses cutting-edge solar technology to produce energy and to give visual expression to the creative capacity of the sun’s rays. The electricity is discharged into light diodes that, depending on the state of charge, the time of day and the angle of the incoming light, flash in different quantities, constellations and frequencies: they flash singly, interact with one another and move in swarms across the curtain of the façade. Together with the other technical components, each light diode is mounted on a plate-sized circuit board and enclosed in a protective red casing. In interaction with each other and with the surroundings, these units, which are attached to the mesh at irregular intervals, provide the first introduction to the pavilion’s theme.

Valentin Spiess – the CEO of iart interactive, who realised the Swiss pavilion’s façade in cooperation with the architects Buchner & Bründler and with tegoro solutions – has been creating interactive façades for the past ten years and attaches great importance to their interaction with buildings’ interiors: “We always try to achieve more than an attractive external shell for the architecture. The Swiss pavilion’s façade transports content towards the exterior; it is designed so as interrelate with the surroundings and visitors can playfully influence its activity, which, as experience shows, results in strong identification and emotional involvement. What is more, the façade provides its own energy supply and will be recycled at the end of Expo: the individual units (or cells) will be auctioned off, thereby carrying the pavilion’s message further.”

The façade’s role in evoking and recalling ‘Rural-Urban Interaction’

Addressing the theme of ‘Rural-Urban Interaction’, the Swiss pavilion mirrors the symbiotic, interconnected and interactive relationship between town and country in Switzerland. The façade gives visitors their first encounter with the theme. Its design and its responsiveness are intended to present Switzerland, even from a distance, as an innovative, technically advanced and ecologically aware country. On observing the façade’s red units more closely, testing their interactive capabilities and entering the pavilion, visitors obtain an increasingly concrete idea of Switzerland’s conception of the town or city of the future: a hybrid, interconnected place in which nature and technology, innovativeness and sustainability, individuals and society interact symbiotically. Supported by the architectonic structure, the themes are treated in greater depth through technological and media insights into Switzerland’s landscape and its population.

The façade’s individual units present this content abstractly. It is alluded to, without too much being immediately disclosed about the pavilion’s interior. The front side conveys a view of Switzerland from the outside: in an abstract representation of its landscape, Switzerland is outlined in white behind red polycarbonate. The electronics and conductor paths visible from the same side stand for the urban part of the country: its towns and cities, their modern infrastructure and their complex interconnection. The rear side of the façade, or rather its individual units, shows a view of Switzerland from the inside. Population density in urban and rural regions is represented by graphic ring formations. Against the light, Switzerland’s outline now emerges clearly. It is as if we were looking at Switzerland through rose-coloured glasses from inside the country. At the same time, the transparent net (the national frontiers) provides a clear view of the surroundings, representing the interchange and cooperation that go on with neighbouring countries.

After the end of the exhibition, the façade’s units will be auctioned off as innovative gadgets and souvenirs. Information will be provided about the assembly, function and significance of the solar-powered components. That way, the façade will be reused, carrying its message and the memory of an innovative, sustainability-oriented Switzerland into Chinese households.

Sources of Inspiration for the functioning of the façade’s units:

Cells, sun discs, power stations – The façade’s interactive components

The façade’s units function autonomously; they lead their own life, so to speak. In their functions and their capabilities they resemble biological cells: they are structurally separate, independent and self-sustaining systems. Like plant cells, they absorb light, convert it into energy that they can use themselves and store it, thereby assuring their own survival. The inclusion of micro-controllers also assures mutual responsiveness, which is activated on the façade as soon as the individual components’ state of charge equals 3.6 volts. As a result of electromagnetic impulses, each unit influences neighbouring units’ responses when it flashes. A chain reaction is triggered, with swarms of flashes moving across the façade. In this way, the interconnection that determines man’s quality of life today and tomorrow is expressed visually.

The form, functions and capabilities of the façade’s units also evoke sun discs. Sun discs of an innovative kind that serve not only to represent themselves and their symbolic role as a life-giving force. By absorbing the sun’s energy, storing it and using it for new light flashes, they mirror the sun’s daytime activity, giving tangible expression to its power and usefulness as an energy source.

The façade’s design is even such that it displays the dynamic of a highly topical form of energy production. Its behaviour provides a simplified visualisation of the operation of intelligent electricity networks, the so-called smart grids to which private houses with their own small power stations are connected: sophisticated energy management assures the highest possible energy efficiency, because users are encouraged to save energy. Data relating to energy consumption and storage are regularly controlled, recorded and communicated. Users consequently automatically receive information about energy-guzzlers and ways to save energy. As with a smart grid, autonomously functioning units connected to the façade’s network regularly monitor their energy consumption and storage, so that the users (the LEDs) can function as efficiently as possible. To further assure their energy supply and to structure their operation, the façade’s units alternate in the course of the day between modes that consume different amounts of energy.

Technical details:

10,000 interactive façade components

The façade, suspended from a height of 20 meters, consists of a coarsely meshed wire curtain on which 10,000 red, plate-sized units are attached at irregular intervals. Each unit contains a circuit board shaped like the map of Switzerland together with the electronic components that make the façade interactive: solar cells, two double-layered capacitators (particularly powerful energy storage devices), a flashing LED (Light Emitting Diode) and sensors that react to ambient light and neighbouring units. The electronic components are protected with a casing made of transparent red polycarbonate. A field with a crystalline structure is overlaid on the Swiss map so that it is not visible at first sight. The silhouette of this field correspond to the Swiss pavilion’s floor plan, while one of the cylinders contains the solar cells.

The sun as a source of energy and a control system

The solar cells generate power that is stored in the capacitator and then discharged when the light diodes flash. Thanks to sensors, flashes occur in response to ambient light, varying according to the light’s strength. If the light falling on one section of the façade becomes brighter, the light sensors transmit a message that causes the light diodes in that section to flash. Depending on their state of charge and on ambient light, the units on the façade vary in the course of the day between different activity levels, which determine the LEDs’ responsiveness and how frequently they flash.

From dawn till dusk – The façade’s activity in the course of a day

The flashing of the façade’s units (or cells) depends on the ambient light and their respective state of charge. As from sunrise, they store energy from the light that falls on them, reaching different states of charge depending on the weather conditions. Through regular monitoring of their own state of charge, they themselves ensure that they never consume too much energy; they adapt their level of activity so that they have enough energy for the entire day and for up to five hours after sunset. Their activity is governed by a series of different pre-programmed modes that consume differing amounts of energy.

There are seven modes: day mode, interaction mode, hyperactivity mode, zenith mode, twilight mode, night mode and supernova mode.

Day mode turns itself on in the morning as soon as the cell is awakened by the first morning light and has accumulated a small charge. The cell still has to operate economically, however, and does not yet interact with the other cells or camera flashes. The flashing frequency increases in line with the cell’s state of charge until the point where flashes occur once a minute.

Towards 11 am the cell is sufficiently charged (> 3.6 volts) to be able to become more active; it switches to interaction mode. Now it flashes at least every 40 seconds and also reacts to neighbouring cells’ activity.

Around noon, on days when the weather is good, the cell switches to hyperactivity mode, interacting at a faster rhythm. It flashes at least every 5 seconds as well as when neighbouring cells are active, so that the flashes move like swarms over the façade. At this point, individual cells reach their maximum energy consumption.

If the sun is shining in a clear blue sky, the cell switches to zenith mode. To prevent an excessive charge, it flashes several times a second and responds to neighbouring cells’ activity. The interaction is always controlled, however. To avoid an uncontrolled lightning storm on the façade, there is a built-in delay in responsiveness: individual cells cannot flash twice in immediate succession.

When the state of charge decreases, the cell first switches to interaction mode, moving over to day mode when further energy is lost.

As soon as daylight drops below around 100 Lux, the cell switches to twilight mode. It flashes approximately once a minute and responds only to camera flashes.

Around one hour after sunset the cell has reached such a low state of charge that it moves over to night mode: it allocates its remaining energy in such a way that it can survive for as long as possible, without completely ceasing to flash. This monitoring and energy allocation is repeated regularly, always in light of the charge and the amount of time that still remain.

By approximately five hours after sunset, the cell’s charge drops to around 2 volts and it calls upon its last remaining energy reserves. Conscious of its imminent death, it switches to supernova mode for a massive pulse of energy, is briefly hyperactive and then, following a flurry of flashes, suddenly expires. Every night it is extinguished in this way only to be awakened again at sunrise.

Client
Presence Switzerland

Project Team iart
Valentin Spiess, Conception and Coaching
Dominik Seitz, Project Development
Jeannine Spozio, Project Management
Jinglei Zhang, Media Planning
Steffen Blunk, Media Planning
Annette Vonder Mühll, Media Planning
Denise Kratzer, Media Planning
Rahel Stacher, Development and Cell Design
Peter Buchmann, Media Production
Manuel Bürkli, Media Production
Anna Pfeiffer, Media Production
Matthias Buess, Media Technology Projection
Boris Stoll, Procurement
Sabine Rufener, Logistics

Project Team
Buchner & Bründler Architects, Architecture
element design, Exhibition Design
iart interactive ag, Exhibition Media, Concept Design and Construction of Façade Units
tegoro solutions ag, Electronics for Façade Units

For further information or images please contact Anna Pfeiffer

For further information or images please contact Anna Pfeiffer

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Der Schweizer Pavillon auf Vimeo vom 28.10.2010