Tennis Arena Features ‘Folded,’ Retractable Roof | ASCE

http://www.asce.org/magazine/20150217-tennis-arena-features--folded,--retractable-roof/[18/02/2015 9:54:33 AM]

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TENNIS ARENA FEATURES ‘FOLDED,’ RETRACTABLE ROOFSHARE

The newly enclosed Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne boasts a retractable roof and steel-and-glass facade, ensuring that it can be used year-round for tennis as well as other sporting and entertainment events. Populous.

Steel trusses located at the front edges of the moving panels create the peaks and valleys of the roof’s folds. Peter Glenane.

A combination steel-and-glass enclosure founded on piles forms the enclosure for the existing concrete arena, which was originally constructed in the 1980s. Peter Glenane.

By Catherine A. Cardno, Ph.D.

The Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne, Australia, has been enclosed with a retractable roof in a folded shape that enables the tennis court to be used year-round as a music and entertainment venue.

February 17, 2015—This year's Australian Open in Melbourne was marked by the opening of the newly enclosed Margaret Court Arena. With a new retractable roof and steel-and-glass facade enclosure, the open-air concrete tennis arena has not only received a makeover, it has also been transformed into an enclosed building that can host entertainment and sporting events year-round. The retractable roof that tops the arena visually appears to be formed from folded plates that disappear to create a rectangular opening, and can be opened or shut in a mere five minutes.

"We wanted the roof to be finely tuned, sleek, and slender, [while] not being the typical 'slab' of roofing material and engineered steel structure," said Richard Breslin, a senior principal with the Brisbane office of the global architecture firm Populous, who wrote in response to questions posed by Civil Engineering online.

Additionally, "[the arena] needed an identifiable presence within the precinct," Breslin noted, so that it was "clearly identifiable when looking at it from the city or [when] passing by."

The new enclosure and roof for the arena were designed by a joint venture comprising two architecture firms and two structural engineering firms. The architects are Populous's Melbourne office and Melbourne-based NH Architecture; the structural engineering firms are the Melbourne office of Aurecon and the Austin, Texas, office of Walter P Moore.

"The existing facility was built in the late 1980s, so it was nearly 30 years old and it really needed a 'refurb,'" says Mark Sheldon, CPEng FIEAust, the technical director of the buildings group at the Melbourne office of Aurecon. "The client didn't want to demolish what was there and start again, so we had to make good with what was there," he says. (The client team included Major Projects Victoria, Melbourne & Olympic Parks Trust, and Tennis Australia.)

"The intent was to build something relatively lightweight …[because] it was quite a tight site, with lots of constraints," Sheldon notes. The arena is located adjacent to the much larger 14,800-seat Rod Laver Arena, within a major sports venue known as Melbourne Park, which hosts the Australian Open, among other events. The design of the new enclosure had to take into consideration the site's variable soil as well as underground space that houses vital stadium facilities.

A combination steel-and-glass enclosure founded on piles fit the programmatic need for a lightweight roof and paired well with the aesthetics of the Rod Laver Arena. In addition to the new enclosure and retractable roof, approximately 1,500 seats were added to the arena to bring the seating total up to 7,500.

The minimum interior roof height was dictated by the tennis "high ball" line, at 17 m, while the maximum exterior height of the roof line was determined by the desire to create a lower-profile roof than that of the Rod Laver Arena. Keeping the Margaret Court Arena's roof height lower makes it clear to viewers that the arena is a separate, smaller venue, according to the

designers.

The visually folded, retractable roof fit the bill, according to Mark Waggoner, P.E. , M.ASCE, a principal of Walter P Moore working in its Austin office and the firm's structural principal for the project. "One of the important things is that the roof tucked very tightly to the facility," Waggoner says. This creates an intimate space for concerts and sporting events inside the building without detracting from the prominence of the other arena, he says.

Sliding roofs often contain layers designed to span across large distances, which increases the depth of the roofs and gives them imposing exterior presences. But this arena roof was designed so that there are only two panels, each measuring 57 by 32 m, which stack onto fixed panels; this creates a far less imposing roof structure.

"We came up with a system where the sliding roof panels kind of nest into those folds you see in the roof," Waggoner notes. Steel trusses located at the front edges of the moving panels create the peaks and valleys of the roof's folds. The opposite edge of the panels "sit on what we call 'mini-bogies' that ride along the peaks of each [fixed] roof panel," he says. These mini-bogies are small mechanisms with wheels that ride along tracks embedded in the fixed roof sections to support the moving roof panels, Waggoner explains.

Creating a moving roof along a folded plane posed some challenges. "The rails as they are constructed won't be perfectly straight, and they won't be perfectly level—that's just the tolerances that have to be allowed for in any structure," Sheldon explains. In addition, the weight of the cladding and the roof will deform the roof into a slightly different shape, he says. The rotational capability of the bogies had to take these conditions into consideration, as well as accommodate any roof skewing that might be needed.

"If you've got two flat plates, and you allow one to skew with respect to the other, you don't have any potential clashes," Sheldon says. "But when you've got folded planes, if one of the lead bogies gets ahead of the other lead bogie slightly, the whole roof will rotate," he explains. "We've got to make sure that that little bit of rotation doesn't cause something to jam on one of the trailing edges," he explains.

The solution was relatively straightforward: out of the 9 bogies that move each of the two roof sections, one on each side is fixed to act as "master" bogie, driving the system, Sheldon explains. "All the other eight bogies have the ability to rotate longitudinally and laterally," he says. Sliding bearings are used to accommodate the slight variations in angles of the tracks, while rotational bearings accommodate the variations in levels.

Even though so much attention was given to the opening of the new roof, it will spend the majority of its time closed. "When [the roof] is closed, you don't really notice that it's got a moving a piece to it," Waggoner says. "A lot of hard work and design went into this, to make it integrated into the building itself." (A time-lapse video of the construction of the arena's new enclosure and roof is available .)

The official opening of the Margaret Court Arena completes the AUD$366-million (U.S.$284.7-million) first phase of the redevelopment of Melbourne Park, which is being undertaken by the Victorian Government.

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