Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The new home of Al Ain Football Club features a floating steel cantilever roof clad with polycarbonate and tension membranes. Thornton Tomasetti provided integrated structural engineering and facade engineering services for the fast-track design-build project, from the concept phase through detailed design.
A Shared BIM
The stadium was designed using BIM, which the entire project team utilized, working in parallel on one Revit model to develop the design. Multidisciplinary integrated modeling allowed for easier coordination of complex geometry and connections, faster response to owner-driven changes and accurate monitoring of quantities for price certainty. The roof’s sweeping form was modeled in Grasshopper, a generative modeling tool for Rhino 3D, and was continuously analyzed for structural stability, daylight penetration, and thermal and solar performance to ensure that the final design was the most structurally efficient option for meeting functional shading needs and architectural goals.
A Rationalized Façade
The building façade – inspired by the pattern on the bole of a palm tree – features panels supported on a steel-framed diagrid system. The project team used computational design to rationalize the panel geometry, reducing the number of different steelwork connections and increasing their adaptability so fewer panel shapes were required.
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