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The Singapore Sports Hub is a new stadium and events complex in the Southeast Asian country
The project comes in at a cost of more than $1 billion dollars
Sports Hub has not been short of challenges including struggles with the quality of the stadium playing surface
It’s the latest landmark on Singapore’s already busy skyline.
It features a 55,000 seater stadium, swimming pool complex and water sports facilities.
It’s also the winner of a World Architecture award and is described by the projects chief operating officer as less of a venue and more of “a brand new city.”
Welcome to Singapore’s Sports Hub, which opened in June at a cost of more than $1 billion.
This 350,000 square meter site, in one of the most land scarce countries in the world, is the result of a government driven initiative to firmly place Singapore on the global events calendar.
It also hopes to get citizens moving and involved in all manner of sporting activities.
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According to Jonathan Rose, principal of design firm Aecom, the project has raised the bar in terms of its look, feel and goals.
“Sports Hub really is setting a completely new standard for how major sports infrastructure is being integrated to the community and … the life of the city,” Rose said.
Inside, the main venue is decorated in a patriotic red and white, the national colors of Singapore.
For COO, Oon Jin Teik, the building was designed to be versatile as well as symbol of national pride.
“Singapore is not a one sport nation,” Oon said. As such, the sports hub will cater for football, athletics, rugby, cricket and even concerts under one giant roof.
At 310 meters across the distinctive roof is the largest free spanning dome in the world.
“It takes away the heat, the direct sunlight, it takes away the heavy rain,” Oon said. But it also does more than that.
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A 200 meter by 100 meter section of super lightweight steel can be moved on demand, taking 22 minutes to open and close.
The traditional air conditioning system featured at similar retractable roof venues, meanwhile, has been replaced by an innovative bowl cooling system.
These nifty features bring a host of benefits unseen elsewhere.
“You can sell tickets for banks of seats and then you can switch on the cooling for different banks of seats,” said lead architect, Clive Lewis.
“In that way you reduce the energy by a sixth … of the energy you would use to cool a conventional closed stadium.”
But while the design may lead towards the environmentally friendly it also creates some unique challenges – including grass that isn’t quite the normal shade of green yet.
As described by Oon, “at different parts of the pitch the humidity is different, the wind is different, and therefore soil conditions are different.”
The Sports Hub has suffered its share of embarrassment because of its sandy pitch in recent months.
But there are signs a solution may be in sight.
“We found that we needed a more even blend of regular sunlight all the time,” Oon said. “We want to get it right more badly than our harshest critic.”
That’s required the stadium operators to adapt their plans for the facility.
Luckily for them, the engineering flexibility afforded by the stadiums high tech design allows fine tuning for long term success.
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