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Features
Thornton Tomasetti kee at Wimbledon’s No
With nearly a billion people tuning in for The Championships, Wimbledon globally each year, the great British summer can’t be relied upon to ensure that rain won’t stop play during the world’s oldest tennis tournament at The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC). As part of a wider redevelopment of the
No.1 Court, the AELTC called on Thornton Tomasetti to provide structural and façade engineering for a new roof on its second Show Court. In addition to adding a roof with fixed and moveable components, the project increased seating capacity by 900 on two new tiers and created new areas for the public, including a two-level plaza, concessions, catering spaces, and hospitality suites. With the AELTC’s commitment to not
only deliver the roof for The Championships 2019, but to also have the stadium operational for the two intervening events, confidence and certainty in the design vision
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were key drivers for the project team. “This was at the forefront of our minds as we embarked on the design process,” Mike Roberts, who led the Thornton Tomasetti team, said. “The need to instil confidence in our client, the All England Club, and to provide them with the certainty that this ambitious goal could be achieved, shaped the way we approached the design as well as how we collaborated with the many parties that were involved in this project.” The structural design required the
integration of several vital factors. The fixed roof had to support the retractable roof’s components while conforming to strict planning height restrictions, maintaining lines of sight, and working within the residual strength capacities of the existing supporting bowl structure below. Fitting new structural elements into the tight space and working within a very constrained construction site added complexity to the engineers’ task. Effective coordination was key to the
realisation of this intricate design. Integrating the retractable roof, with its very tight tolerance requirements, as well as extensive mechanical and electrical equipment into the fixed roof structure required careful design
©AELTC
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