About the stadium
  
 
Seating capacity - 100 000 (reducing to 80 000 after the 2008 Olympics)
 
 
Total space enclosed within the roof - 3M m3
 
 
Gross floor area - 250 000 m2
 
 
Structure - 36km of unwrapped steel length
 
 
Height - 69.2m above pitch level

The stadium will host the opening and closing of the 29th Olympiad, as well as track and field events. On completion it will have a capacity of 100 000 and it is believed that it will be the world’s largest enclosed space.

We are providing a full multidisciplinary service on the project. Our scope includes: sports architecture, structural, mechanical, electrical, and public health engineering; acoustics and fire strategy and sports lighting.

Inspired by randomness in nature, and patterns found in Chinese style ‘crazed’ pottery typically found in Beijing markets, there are, in fact, several layers of patterns that the eye does not pick up on the stadium’s apparently random structure.

Bowl construction

To reduce costs, the outside of the stadium needed to have minimum surface but contain all the structure. There are no towers or cable nets forming the support. We designed the bowl first and the outside facade wraps around this.

The Arup Sport teams’ concept separates the roof from the bowl for seismic stability and to provide a 3-D structure to span the 330m by 220m space.

The geometry of the bowl was defined using a powerful new computer software programme, specifically written by Arup for this purpose. The software is parametric which means many layouts can be generated just by altering some of the rules.

The roof is a single 330m long by 220m wide structure, weighs 45 000 tonnes and is fabricated from steel.

It is clad with a series of ETFE panels on the upper surface, with an acoustic membrane on the lower surface. This layer reflects and absorbs sound to maintain the atmosphere in the stadium.