Singapore Sports Hub

The Singapore National Stadium will form the centre piece to the new Singapore Sports Hub, and lies at the heart of the 35ha sports precinct. With a dome roof spanning 310m the stadium roof provides shade and shelter to the stadium as well as the non-ticketed public spaces that link the facilities around it. The stadium incorporates a movable roof and bowl cooling to ensure spectator comfort and has also integrated a movable lower-tier to provide optimised viewing for a range of sporting events.

Arup, the global design, engineering and business consultancy, announced today that its design of the ultra-thin 310m wide steel dome roof for the new National Stadium has commenced on a positive note.

Set to be the largest dome roof in the world, the simple geometric form of the new National Stadium will be juxtaposed against the inverted ‘peaked’ roof of the Singapore Indoor Stadium to create one of Singapore’s most impressive skylines.

The dome will provide shade and shelter to the 55,000-seat stadium and surrounding non-ticketed community spaces and will be the only stadium in the world, custom-built to host football, rugby, cricket, and athletic events in one venue. The west end of the stadium which is open-ended, will provide breathtaking view across the city and provide the perfect setting for Singapore’s own National Day Parade which is slated to be hosted annually in the stadium.

Adds Clive Lewis, Arup’s lead Sports Venue Designer for the Singapore Sports Hub, “The tropical climate in Singapore poses a challenge in the design of the National Stadium. People will only enjoy the stadium experience if the environmental conditions are right. We wanted to keep the rain and heat out, but we also wanted it to be an open and dynamic space. After extensive research into comfort expectations and energy in use, we realised that a naturally ventilated stadium with localised cooling gave us the best solution for the local climate in Singapore. By incorporating a moving roof, the stadium will be further protected from the harsh climatic conditions, allowing events to be hosted during the hottest parts of the day.”

The 20,000m² moving roof will be clad in a multi-layer ETFE pillow and incorporate a matrix of LED lights, making it one of the largest addressable LED screens in the world.

The moving roof is supported by the fixed roof dome structure with a clear span of 310m. The architectural design and engineering of this structure was done using advanced parametric modeling software, as well as in-house software that Arup developed specifically for the project. This optimised information exchange greatly among the architects, engineers and contractors.

The result is a super efficient shell dome structure, with a total steel weight of 8,057 metric tons. At a structural weight per square metre of just over 100kg/m² , this would be considered efficient even for a roof that was half this span.

“The construction of the National Stadium is the launch pad for many other key elements in the project. It will be Asia’s only event site with the technology, capacity and services to cater to residents, overseas visitors, sports professionals and global artists 365 days a year,” says Mark Collins, Vice President and Managing Director of Global Spectrum Asia Pte Ltd. The company is one of the eight project partners of the SportsHub Pte Ltd Consortium, which has

four equity partners – Dragages Singapore Pte Ltd, Infrared Capital Partners, UGL Services, and Global Spectrum Asia.

To date, Singapore Sports Hub is the largest sports infrastructure Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) project in the world. In line with Singapore Sports Council’s Vision 2030 master plan, Sports Hub will offer one and all the opportunity and access to live better through sports. It will be a platform for national athletes to hone their sporting talents and inspire participation in sports among the community.

With local firm DP Architects as masterplanners, the Sports Hub is designed within a natural landscape that is linked to an island-wide park connector system and will be accessible to everyone and anyone 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Construction of the SportsHub is expected to be complete by 2014.