EDDIE IZZARD

SPORTS STRUCTURES
The EuroHockey tournament took over
London’s Olympic Park for 10 days
Project: Temporary structures for the EuroHockey Championship 2015
By: Neptunus
The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
in London is living up to LOCOG’s
legacy pledge of turning the vast
park into a venue able to host a varied
range of elite competitions. In August,
the park hosted the Unibet EuroHockey
Championship. For the competition, the
organiser, England Hockey (working in
partnership with event specialist ICON),
needed flexible, easily constructed facilities
in order to transform the Lee Valley Hockey
and Tennis Centre within the Olympic
Park into a competition venue. Temporary
structure company Neptunus was called
in and given just five days to deliver and
build 2,460sq m of structures at the park.
Working on behalf of long-term client
ICON, Neptunus supplied a number of its
clear-span Alu-halls to form the venue’s
main entrance, main retail area, public
catering structures and the players, friends
and family clubhouse and museum.
Neptunus also provided the venue with a
VIP Pavilion, ticket check-ins, retail outlets
and information points across the park for
the tournament’s 30,000 spectators.
To help protect the all-important
landscape of the iconic Olympic Park, all
of the structures were self-weighted with
concrete floors – with some featuring
bespoke entrance ramps and staircases.
April Trasler, managing director of
Neptunus UK, said: “As the structures
were situated at various locations across
the park, our technical team meticulously
planned the delivery and build to ensure
our onsite crew of 12 could complete the
venue in just five days.”
When Rovaniemen Palloseura
(RoPS), one of the northernmost
top-level football clubs in the
world, decided to build a new main stand
at its Keskuskenttä home ground, the
architect had to take into account the
fierce climate and limited space. Located
above the Arctic Circle, temperatures
in Rovaniemi, Finland, can drop to -47C
(-54F) during winter months. An added
complication was the tight space allocated
for the new stand – squeezed between the
pitch and a public highway running within
The new stand has been designed to cope with Rovaniemi’s extreme climate
Project: Seating for the new main stand at Rovaniemen Palloseura
By: Stechert
20m (22yds) of it. As a result, Germanbased
Stechert was brought in to design
a flexible seating solution which would
maximise the space available. Stechert
used its Berlin range of folding tip-up seats
to create a 2,000-capacity stand.
“We had to take into account the
extreme weather, which can place a huge
strain on the seats, so the durable Berlin
products were a perfect fit,” says Kay
Habermaier, Stechert’s sales manager.
The main stand designer, Finnish
architects Artto Palo Rossi Tikka, picked
the seat colours to feature RoPS’
traditional blue and white as well as the
city’s official colour green. The new €4.8m
stand will increase the stadium’s seating
capacity to 2,800 and total capacity
(including standing) to nearly 5,000.
According to RoPS CEO Petri Jaatinen, the
added capacity could see average ticket
revenue increase by €10,000 per game.
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sportsmanagement.co.uk issue 4 2015 © Cybertrek 2015