Tetris to be played on the sides of a Philadelphia building

Philadelphia residents and visitors will be able to see a very special instance of Tetris during Philly Tech Week next month: a massive game using two sides of the city's 29-story Cira Centre as screens.

Frank Lee, a professor at Drexel University and founder of the school's Entrepreneurial Game Studio, is expanding on a feat he pulled off last year with the participation of Brandywine Realty Trust, the company that owns the Cira Centre. The building is adorned with 1,500 programmable LEDs, so Lee and his team coded a special version of Pong that would take place on the facade of the high-rise. It debuted in mid-April during Philly Tech Week 2013, and set a Guinness World Record for "Largest Architectural Video Game Display."

The Pong game was played using 460 LEDs on one side of the Cira Centre, taking up an area of 59,800 square feet. Lee's version of Tetris will take place on the north- and south-facing walls of the building, occupying more than 100,000 square feet.

"One regret that I had was that we only used one side of the building. So it was only visible to half of the city. This year, I wanted to find a way to use all sides of the building and truly created an aesthetic of a unique and fleeting moment shared by all the people in Philadelphia," said Lee in a press release today.

The players will be stationed north of the Cira Centre at Eakins Oval, and at a separate location south of the building. Individuals can apply to play at an online lottery here; winners will be announced April 4, the night of the Tetris game, during Philly Tech Week's Arcade @ The Oval event. Philly Tech Week 2014 runs from April 4-12.