Bao’an Stadium, Universiade 2011

The stadium in the Bao’an district of Shenzhen has been designed as a field-and-track stadium for 40,000 spectators and—during the 2011 Universiade, one of the largest sporting events in the world—was used for the football matches. The extensive bamboo forests of Southern China inspired the design of this stadium: after walking through the two rows of green steel columns, visitors enter the stadium concourse that leads to the steps of the upper tier and lower grandstand. Every second column of the inner row is tied in with the concrete structure of the undulating upper tier and supports the vertical loads of the spectator grandstands. The diameter of the up to 32-m-long steel tubes varies between 55 cm and 88 cm to suit the different structural conditions. The spectator tiers are covered by a tensile membrane structure with an inner ring and radial spokes. The roof, with a diameter of 230 meters and a cantilevering projection of 54 meters on each side of the tiers, is formed of 36 radial cable pairs, which are tied together above the playing field via a double circular tensile ring consisting of cable bundles.