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Arup carried out the fire protection strategy and the structural design on basic project phase of the stadium RCD Espanyol, located in the city of Cornellá, Barcelona.
The 100,000m2 stadium has a capacity to hold 45,000 spectators and has several commercial and sport services, such us a library and a hotel. Our team was responsible for the structural design of both the grandstand and foundations as well as the roof, made of reinforced concrete and steel respectively.
'Best sports facility' award
Designed by FIA Fenwick Iribarren Architects and Gasulla Arquitectura Reid Fenwick Associates architectural team, this new stadium has been awarded first prize for the best global sports facility in 2010, after a competition organized by the Guinness group and StadiumBusiness.com portal.
To achieve the best visibility, the design of the stadium includes having the position of the spectators as close as possible to the playing field to create good sporting environment within the facility.
The stadium's evacuation strategy has been developed under a disposal method based on the analysis of pedestrian flows, successfully tested on many previous projects.
Roof design
The building is in the shape of an ellipse with a flat rectangle roof of 200x160m, with a central hole coinciding with the pitch of 120x80m. The design covers the long and short stands, leaving the corners and the central area of the pitch in the open air.
One of the most interesting aspects of the design is the shape of the roof, which is totally flat, with large spans of up to 200m between columns. The roof consists of primary and secondary truss tubular steel and sheet metal enclosures on straps. We also performed a preliminary dynamic analysis of the bleachers, which consists of an L-shaped precast.
