How four technicians installed FIFA World Cup's giant 'Beautiful Dome' soccer ball in Vancouver

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Over the duration of 20 working days, over a project period beginning on May 6 and ending on June 3, anyone passing Vancouver’s East False Creek waterfront area could look up and see a few tiny figures suspended from the gleaming geodesic dome of Science World, methodically transforming one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks into a giant replica of the official 2026 FIFA World Cup Trionda match soccer ball. Moreover, countless people have now seen photos and video footage of the completed ginormous soccer ball backdropped by the inlet waters, BC Place Stadium, and the rest of the Downtown Vancouver skyline, and the mountains in the distance. The 40-metre-diameter public art installation is aptly named “The Beautiful Dome.” The giant Trionda also serves as a fitting gateway, standing at the entrance to the “Last Mile” vehicle-free pedestrian route used by about 80 per cent of FIFA World Cup match ticket holders on their walk to BC Place Stadium. You might also like: - FIFA World Cup screens installed to hide eyesore at Vancouver's perfect viewpoint of Science World soccer ball - The Beautiful Dome: Science World's FIFA World Cup soccer ball dome transformation is now 100% complete - A giant match ball outside, soccer science inside: Science World goes all in on FIFA World Cup - After years of planning, Vancouver's FIFA World Cup chief sees the city come alive for a 'summer of soccer' - FIFA World Cup's official soccer ball now riding atop Aquabus and False Creek Ferries in Vancouver - Opinion: The 2026 FIFA World Cup belongs to 16 host cities, and Vancouver is turning its share into something much bigger The weeks-long installation process for the Trionda drew curious onlookers, countless social media posts, and international attention as the iconic reflective dome structure gradually disappeared beneath 130 hexagon-shaped banner panels — before emerging as one of the defining visual symbols of not only Vancouver’s role as a FIFA World Cup host city, but also the entire tournament in North America. For Patrick Lynch, a rope access technician with Port Coquitlam-based company Hybrid Access who replaced Science World’s exterior programmable LED lighting system with 651 new fixtures in 2023, returning to the landmark was an opportunity few in his profession would pass up. That project quickly became one of the highlights of Lynch’s career. Three years later, transforming the iconic geodesic dome into the Trionda has earned a place alongside it. “We’re always happy to go back to Science World. Everyone in Rope Access wants to hang off Science World,” Lynch told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview. “It’s a major icon of the city. It’s a fun, interesting work site for us. We get to actually use our skills, be a bit creative.” “So from an actual doing work point of view, it’s always interesting and slightly different to our sort of day to day.” > Rope access technicians seen carefully installing hexagon-shaped banner panels onto the structure that supports Science World’s dome. > > “The Beautiful Dome,” a replica of the Adidas Trionda soccer ball, will be fully installed by early June. #FIFAWorldCuphttps://t.co/VpRJzKjX3P pic.twitter.com/bvUW2HHVn8 > > — Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) May 14, 2026 Having previously completed the dome’s months-long LED lighting replacement, the Hybrid Access crew already understood the structure’s unique geometry before work on the FIFA World Cup transformation began. That previous experience proved valuable long before the first banner was installed. Although the installation itself drew on his team’s expertise, it was underpinned by very significant technical planning and design work. Hybrid Access worked with Ontario-based global brand experience firm The Look Company (TLC), which was commissioned by Science World and Destination Vancouver to replicate the Trionda at architectural scale. TLC deployed a combination of drone and ground-based surveying to perform a full light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scan of the 40-metre dome, using the company’s proprietary ScanAudit technology to create a centimetre-accurate, three-dimensional digital twin of the entire landmark. Prior to the start of the full installation process, the team tested the prototype banner panels on site to ensure the installation method and dimensions would perform exactly as intended on the complex structure, with some minor adjustments subsequently made. A total of 131 panels were subsequently manufactured, with each panel individually engineered and fabricated to fit its designated hexagon-shaped frame location on the exoskeleton structure that supports the dome. The banner panels were not applied directly onto the silver steel surface, but rather they hover above the surface, creating a narrow air space between the solid surface and the underside of the panels. Each panel is slightly different in size and shape and was manufactured to within a tolerance of just two centimetres around the edges. There are approximately 65,000 sq. ft. of architectural-grade coated fabric banner panels, along with 12,000 linear feet of reinforcement webbing. Lynch’s team of four rope access technicians carefully positioned and tensioned every banner panel, attaching each unit to the exoskeleton structure using thousands of heavy-duty elastic ties that looped through the grommets on the panels. They had a supply of about 16,000 ties, and he estimates they used more than 10,000. “We didn’t have one fitment issue. They all perfectly fit every single time and every single one went exactly where it should go. From my point of view, that was a super cool part of the sort of technology of this sort of project,” Lynch told Daily Hive Urbanized. While 131 unique banner panels were manufactured, one was ultimately not installed at the very pinnacle of the dome, as can be seen in aerial drone footage — where one of the hexagon frames at the very top of the structure is bare, meaning the installation technically has 130 panels. Each banner panel had to be manually lifted into place by a crew member, without the use of cranes, power winches, or other heavy equipment. In fact, every single panel required multiple trips up and down the dome. At the staging area on the lower roof of Science World, they would prepare by folding and tying up a panel. Then the crew would go up on the ropes and pull it up to the installation area using hauling ropes with simple mechanical advantage systems before temporarily pinning the corners into place. They descended again, adjusted the alignment, climbed back up to tension the material, and then performed another round of checks to ensure the panel was positioned correctly on the hexagon-shaped frame of the exoskeleton structure. “I think it was very tiring... It was all manpower,” he said, when asked about the challenges. “We’re getting quite tired on the ropes as well.” “It’s windy, but the reflective dome gets you nice and hot. We had quite a few hot days, so fatigue was kind of probably the biggest challenge.” They started by completing the upper section of the soccer ball first before focusing on other areas that required more vertical rope access work. As more banner panels covered the dome, moving around the structure became increasingly confined, necessitating spending much of their time squeezing beneath already installed panels. “It was sneaking behind things. You still get a fair bit of space underneath, but you can’t quite stand up on some of them. You’re sort of crouching to almost kneeling on something depending on where they are on the dome,” he told Daily Hive Urbanized. As public interest grew, so too did questions from people wondering why progress appeared gradual. The crew routinely worked up to 10 hours a day suspended from ropes. “We got a lot of comments that we were going too slow, but we’re kind of like going as fast as we can go. I don’t want to kill anyone on the side of the dome,” he said, emphasizing the priority of safety. Despite the physical demands, Lynch credited the extensive planning behind the project for preventing major issues during installation. “Everything was safe. We didn’t really have any problems. The amount of planning that went into this made it to be quite a smooth, easy project,” he said. Then came completion day, which became a celebration. The final panel that was installed filled a hexagon opening on the south side of the dome to the left of the 2026 FIFA World Cup logo on the soccer ball. This completion positioning was reached a full week before the tournament’s kickoff. That panel was intentionally installed with extra theatrics as drones captured the moment from above. Lynch said the public response far exceeded anything the crew experienced during the earlier LED lighting replacement. “We made a scene out of it because I think everyone was pretty stoked to have it in. It was just such a big deal,” he said. > > > > > > View this post on Instagram > > > > > > > A post shared by Destination Vancouver (@destination_vancouver) Lynch began his career as a rope access technician in Australia roughly a decade and a half ago, where the work brought him to doing tasks on bridges. In British Columbia, he has worked on wind turbines in the northern areas of the province, BC Hydro’s hydroelectric dams, confined spaces in underground tunnels, the Lions Gate Bridge, and the Port Mann Bridge, including operating its gravity-fed collar system for removing snow and ice from the bridge cables. Once the crew descended after completing the Trionda’s final panel, something happened that Lynch said had never occurred before in his career as a rope access technician. “For the first time ever, actually, once we finished our work, we sort of packed up and came down and we got a big clap when we got downstairs, which is kind of hilarious,” he said. After the sun goes down, the soccer ball is softly illuminated by Science World’s programmable LED lighting system, with light filtering through the banner panels to create a subtle glow. Now that residents and visitors are taking photos with the dome, and people around the world are seeing Science World’s transformed dome during FIFA World Cup broadcasts, Lynch says the project has become a career highlight. “It’s one that’s a nice project where you get to stand back and look at it and kind of be proud of something you did. It’s in sight and it looks good,” he told Daily Hive Urbanized. “It’s just a good feeling sort of project really for us.” Lynch says the Trionda look for Science World is expected to remain in place for a while longer after the FIFA World Cup championship final match. His crew will return to the site to dismantle it some time after the Soccer & Technology: The Exhibition from the FIFA Museum inside Science World concludes on Labour Day, Sept. 7. Although a number of parties were involved in the project, Destination Vancouver was the primary financial backer for this complex and drastic temporary makeover of the landmark. “It was our hope that this shot, that ball, would become the shot of the tournament, and that’s what’s starting to happen. The amount of media pickup, the amount of visitor pickup, the amount of content being produced is doing exactly what we hoped it was going to do, and we hope that shot, that ending, helps to tell the story about Vancouver better than any marketing campaign we could actually pull together in that way,” said Royce Chwin, president and CEO of Destination Vancouver, just before the start of the tournament. Planning for this project first began in January 2025. “The Financial Times was sporting the front page, BBC Sports on their page as well, and the 16 cities all competing, they could have taken an image from any one of the cities, and they keep choosing Vancouver, and that’s exactly what we want to have happen,” continued Chwin. 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