We’ve worked on the World Badminton finals at the NIA for the past 4 years. Usually they go for a floating balloon arch which is walked on and off after each final. This is nice and simple because it floats and will always naturally return to a symmetrical arch after it’s been moved. This year the orgainsers decided they wanted a square goal shape. This would usually be a simple task – make a square frame and cover it in air filled balloons. The process of moving the structure on and off the stage 5 times though out the event made things more complicated, if the 2 volunteers moving each column walked at different speeds the crossbar could break away from the side supports.
I decided to use no solid crossbar, the horizontal garland was made of string and balloons. To do this I mixed air and helium clusters to reduce the buoyancy I didn’t want the garland to float into an arch and I didn’t want it to droop into a swag, I knew that when the side columns were pulled to a certain distance the crossbar would be straight.
You can see on the above photo that the garland is just about floating – this is even after mixing clusters of 4 helium balloons with clusters of 4 air filled. As the presentation on stage was 4 hours after the build, it should be just about not be floating for the event as the helium escapes naturally from the latex.
I did wonder why the organisers had made something nice and simple into a more challenging structure – but you can see from the awards photos that the balloons in an arch would have been floating way above the winners.
UPDATE: We were back again on 13.03.2016 and the NIA is now named the Barclaycard Arena, here’s the arch.