Vancouver turns its Science World museum into a giant 17-story soccer ball for the World Cup

Some two years ago, Science World, stadium and host city officials were discussing the best ways to capitalize on the World Cup coming to their city.

“We were kind of saying, well, we should definitely wrap the dome as a soccer ball, right? And it was kind of a joke, because then it was like, well, who’s going to pay for it and how do we do it? So many questions,” said Rob Hollingsworth, senior director for commercial Sales and partnerships at Science World. “But I think in this instance the idea was actually the easy bit, because you know we’ve got a massive ball on our roof.”

Adidas, which designed the World Cup's official match ball, agreed to allow the replica. Local businesses, organizations and government agencies pitched in to help pay for the project. The only question left was how to pull it off.

The normally silver dome has been a fixture of the Vancouver skyline since it was built for the 1986 World's Fair. At the 2010 Winter Games, it served as the Sochi House to preview the 2014 Olympics. And it has long housed Science World, a museum that includes an IMAX theater.

But when the decision was made to transform it into an enormous soccer ball there were some complications. The only schematics for the building were the original hand-drawn blueprints by local architect Bruno Freschi.

So a drone was dispatched to take detailed laser measurements of each of the geodesic dome's many panels. To everyone's dismay, all of the panels were slightly different.

Yet, pliable panels were manufactured and numbered for their precise locations, then installed and connected with special ties to give slightly in windy conditions.

“We’d orientated it really with broadcast in mind, so you’ll notice that the logo on the ball, that the trophy faces kind of southeast, so that if you’re getting the shot, that iconic Vancouver shot, that lines up Science World, with the stadium, with downtown, with the water and the mountains, you get everything in one," Hollingsworth said.

Turns out, however, that Science World isn't just a soccer ball during the World Cup, it's still a museum and it's hosting a special exhibit, Soccer and Technology, from the FIFA Museum.

It's the first time the immersive exhibit has been displayed outside of Zurich. Science World tweaked it to add a bit of Canadian flavor, like national star Christine Sinclair's jersey worn during the gold medal match at the Tokyo Olympics, and the match ball from the 2022 men's World Cup in Qatar when Alphonso Davies scored Canada's first-ever goal in the tournament.

The museum has seen a rise in visitors during the tournament, but nothing prepared Science World for the visual explosion on social media, which is filled with photos of the dome, Hollingsworth said.

“We hoped that this would be what happened, but we had no idea, really. In the context of the World Cup, we were one of 16 host cities, so we didn’t know what everyone else was doing, we just knew what we were doing. But we hoped above all it would be a shot that broadcasters would pick up as being kind of the iconic Vancouver shot, and that it would travel around the world in that way during the tournament, and I believe it has,” he said. "What we didn’t know or necessarily foresee is just the organic earned media and the organic social media that’s happening every single day."

See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here.