Arch Tracker

City of Cape Town

Project: Green Point Stadium
Architects: GMP Architects
Louis Karol Architects
Point Architects
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
Owner: City of Cape Town
Operator: SAIL/Stade de France
Surface: Grass
General Contractor: Murray and Roberts/ WBHO
Capacity: 69,070 (FIFA)
Photos: City of Cape Town
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Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town

Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town

The Stadium is located in Green Point, between Signal Hill and the Atlantic Ocean, close to the Cape Town city centre and to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, a popular tourist and shopping venue, during the 2010 FIFA Wolrd Cup it will host five first round matches, one second round, one quarter-final and one semi-final. The stadium will be connected to the waterfront by a new road connection, Granger Bay Boulevard, and will be surrounded by a 60 hectare urban park.

The stadium will contain 68,000 seats for the World Cup. 55,000 Seats will remain permanent and 15,000 modular seats will be re-used in the deconstruction of the existing Green Point Stadium and other social investment opportunities, leaving opportunities for corporate suites to be retrofitted.

City of Cape Town

City of Cape Town

The stadium architecture focuses on the exterior appearance as well as on the user experience for the visitor once inside the stadium bowl. The exterior appearance is largely defined by a sweeping silhouette, not to be in competition with the horizontal datum line of Table Mountain, and the façade, made of a stretched fibre-glass mesh and designed as an articulated surface that makes the building appear almost scaleless.

Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town

The roof is designed as suspended roof plane. It focuses attention downwards onto the playing field. At the same time, the underside of the roof surface, hovering above the spectators, operates in a way similar to the façade. The translucent mesh skin under the steel cable and truss structure will act as a luminous disc during days of sunlight and will transmit the colour and atmosphere of the day into the stadium interior. The double skin design of the roof further makes it possible to accommodate (unsightly) services therein and, for example, avoid the use of pylons for the floodlighting. It fulfils an important function as far as noise attenuation is concerned. The roof structure is designed as an acoustic “body” with its own internal volume. The principle of utilising the air space inside the body of the roof as a noise buffer is one of the compelling simple and active design principles applied to the stadium. The key to this principle is the requirement that the “inner” (lower) and “outer” (upper) surface of the roof structure must have different densities and therefore display different acoustic performance characteristics.

The current design foresees and ETFE (fibreglass-like) cloth membrane, which is partly permeable. This “breathing” softer inner skin disperses sound waves and, since it is not a hard surface, absorbs sound into the body of the roof. The outer (top) skin is currently designed and budgeted as a fixed glass skin, which provides a hard resonant surface which reflects sound waves back into the body of the roof. Through the sloping surface of the roof, sound waves are diffracted back against the soft inner skin membrane, where they are further dispersed.

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The stadium is organized into six principal levels, broadly containing the following functions and zones:

• Level 0 Sports team rooms, VVIP and VIP reception, lowest parking level, medical and police facilities, waste collection and compaction.
• Level 1 Media areas, TV and radio studios, FIFA offices and sports event staff offices, and upper parking level.
• Level 2 Public Plaza Main concourse pedestrian access down to lowest tier and up to second tier, disabled person’s seating, fan shop, VIP welcome zone, concession stands.
• Level 3 Lower level of business club, multi-purpose hall, security and police offices, operator’s storage spaces, smaller food kitchens.
• Level 4 Upper level of business club, larger food preparation kitchens, stadium administration (operator’s) offices.
• Level 5 VIP lounges and private corporate boxes.
• Level 6 Upper concourse, concession stands and access onto third tier of seats.

The roof Is located above the highest level of seats, and contains an accessible roof including the ‘Ring of Fire’ lighting and media zone, with catwalk access into and through the roof structure.

Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town

This multi-purpose venue is also going to be used to stage major events and concerts. Fans will be a stone’s throw from the ocean and the mountains of Cape Town will also provide the backdrop for matches. The location is ideal as it is a short walk from the transportation hub of the city. The new stadium has been partly built on land that was previously used as a golf course.

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