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WI Creations supports World Aquatic Championships’ opening ceremony

An opening ceremony in downtown Budapest marked the start of the 17th FINA World Aquatic Championships, with 14 days of aquatic sports following the event directed by Olivier Feracci from French event production specialist ECA2 and Hungarian film director Csaba Kael, CEO of Mupa Budapest.

WI Creations was contacted by Guillaume Duflot from EC2A, responsible for delivering full technical production for the event, and asked to provide rigging and structures involving a number of bespoke black-steel elements. The WI project was led by Koen Peeters, and on-site crew chiefed by Stano Kusik.

The panoramic setting for the show included a custom-built floating stage, moored on the Danube, with Budapest’s Chain Bridge on stage left. A second floating setup containing the curved tower structures and pyro was built at a nearby shipyard and finally tugged into place in two sections.

The whole scene was overlooked by the Baroque Buda Castle perched on the top of the hill opposite. The building was lit, video mapped and played an important part in the show which also featured some water fountain artistry. A cast of several hundred were onstage performing through the two hour show.

WI designed and constructed four curved steel towers, two at eight metres high and two at 16 metres high and two ‘double-level’ trussing portals, running on a hoist/sleeve block system, each 14 metres high with a 12 metre span. These pieces had to maintain the overall aesthetics and the curved towers also had to stand in temporary water-filled basins feeding the water jets. The curves were out-rigged with lights, sound kit and pyro plus 2D and 3D water jets.

The trussing portals were designed to be lowered quickly if necessary, to respond to fluctuations in the wind speed on site. All of these WI structures had to be built safely on floating barges. The Red Bull Air Race 2017 World Championship was taking place during the construction period, so no structures above 8 metres in height were allowed anywhere near the race route. For that reason the opening ceremony structural build had to be scheduled in two phases.

The towers and portals were initially built to a height of 8 metres and once the Red Bull Air Race was completed, continued up to their full height. The first build phase - up to 8 metres - took place on the quayside, after which the structures were lifted onto the barges. They and the various kit that destined to be rigged on them was stored in the barges until after the Air Race when the barges were towed out to their final ‘event positions’ and anchored.

The towers were then lifted onto the bases, complete with an amount of pre-installed production kit, a careful move involving cranes - also on floating barges - assisting with the final manoeuvring of the metalwork into place. Each truss level of the portals was also pre-assembled on the quayside, then lifted onto the barges and then, in phase two of the installation process, the top sections were lifted into their final positions.

The WI base crew of four was reinforced by another two which enabled two teams of three to operate for day and night shifts during the crucial phases of the installation. Once the structures were assembled, one crew person remained on standby and one of their responsibilities was to make the call to lower the portals in case of bad weather. This only had to happen once, during the programming period.

For the get-out, the crew was again bolstered to six and the overall build period was around ten days (including a break for the RB event). The event’s lighting designer was Frédéric “Aldo” Fayard from Concept K in Paris and PRG France supplied sound, lighting and video. The water fountains were designed by Crystal Group from Paris.

(Photos: Julien Panie)

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