singapore engineer singapore engineer singapore engineer

NEWS
and Managing Director of Global Spectrum Asia Pte Ltd. The
company is one of eight project partners of the SportsHub Pte
Ltd Consortium, four of whom are 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 the Singapore Sports Council’s Vision 2030 master plan,
Singapore 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 for inspiring
the community to participate in sports.
With local firm DP Architects as master planners, Singapore
Sports Hub is designed within a natural landscape that is linked
to an island-wide park connector system.
Aside from the National Stadium, the S$ 1.33 billion Singapore
Sports Hub will be home to:
• A 3,000-capacity indoor world competition standard Aquatic
Centre which can be expanded to a 6,000-capacity venue for
specific events.
• A 3,000-capacity Multi Purpose Indoor Arena (MPIA) which
will be scalable and flexible in layout.
• 41,000 m 2 of commercial retail space.
• A Water Sports Centre catering to elite athletes as well as
the public.
• The existing 12,000-capacity Singapore Indoor Stadium.
• A Sports Information & Resource Centre (SIRC), with sports
library and museum.
Construction of the Singapore Sports Hub is expected to be
completed by 2014.
DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS AND
SOLUTIONS
The Singapore National Stadium will form the centre-piece of
the new Singapore Sports Hub, and lies at the heart of the
35 ha sports precinct. The stadium’s moveable roof and the
incorporation of bowl cooling ensure spectator comfort, and a
moveable lower-tier provides optimised viewing for a range of
sporting events.
The masterplan of the Singapore Sports Hub with the National Stadium in the
central location.
The design concept
When approaching the initial design for the National Stadium,
there were several design drivers that were considered.
The local climate, the site location and the proposed event
programme were all key to the decision to develop the iconic
dome envelope.
In Singapore, the tropical climate creates a major challenge in
the design of large public buildings and for a stadium, it required
a unique architectural response. The public have to be protected
from sun and rain both inside and outside the stadium. In
wet weather, a covered space outside the stadium will allow
spectators to gather before or after an event and provide them
with dry routes to all means of transport. It was realised early on
that a dome was structurally the most efficient form to achieve
the extended spans required to cover this area.
In addition, the design brief had asked for a retractable roof to
provide shade to the spectators during events, and calculations
showed that less steel would be added to support the moving
roof using a dome structure than would be required with a
cantilever roof structure.
Externally, the key master plan objective was to find a form
for the stadium roof that would complement the existing,
architecturally iconic Singapore Indoor Stadium (SIS) building,
and the dome won on this score as well.
The stadium, with its huge dome, besides hosting sports
and athletic events, will also provide a dramatic setting for
concerts and provide a projection surface for interactive
sound and light displays.
Integration of bowl and roof
The combination of sporting events that will be held at the
venue, presented a challenge when designing the 55,000-seat
stadium bowl, because it has to suit the optimised viewing
requirement for each of these events and at the same time
minimise the footprint of the roof dome.
The design brief required the lower tier bowl to be retractable
and for spectators in all tiers to benefit from an energy-efficient
cooling system that would allow the venue to host events at any
time of the day.
The development of the cross-section of the seating bowl was
central to this, in seeking to maximise the benefit of introducing
a moving tier system. Studies were made of similar stadiums
around the world, that integrated a moving tier system - from
Australia to Japan and Europe.
Detailed analysis was done of existing stadiums that incorporated
a permanent athletics track and a moving tier system. Assessment
of these stadiums indicated that they tended to be biased either
towards football or athletics viewing, and did not achieve the
best balance for both, in the same bowl design.
The target was to ensure that the best balance between the two
different viewing criteria (for athletics and football matches), was
achieved. Accordingly, a section profile was developed, which
October 2012 THE SINGAPORE ENGINEER
43