Microsoft Technology Pavilion | nowadays

The Microsoft Technology Pavilion was designed by architectural firm Nowadays for the 2014 Winter Olympic games, held in Sochi. Standard rectangular plots 25x30 meters were given to sponsors of the Games in the Olympic park.

One of the main requirements of the Olympic Committee was to locate a single volume on the site. But the clients wanted to create a public space where visitors could meet between competitions. So architects decided to rethink the proposed layout of a single building in the center of the site and distributed all the functions around the perimeter. It gave the opportunity to create a multilevel courtyard, saturated with various activities.

The pavilion was built of wooden structures on a single platform. The color palette of the windows 8 interface was transferred to the floor in the form of squares of colored chips, literally zoning space.

Facades and fences are made of wooden slats that unite all the volumes on the platform in the whole complex, still maintaining airiness and layering. It's achieved by complex coloring of inner cubes and external facades - each slat has only side faces painted and in different colors, so that while in motion the moire effect appears.

The boundary between interior and exterior space is blurred, for example the amphitheater passes through the wall, organizing lecture room inside and a large sitting area outside.