Client: Arts Alliancearchitect: Various ArchitectsLocation: Norway
Date: 2009-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTCTags: Norway, arts, mobile, inflatable
Arts Alliance mobile arena
A Ramboll project
World Architecture Festival Winner 2009 SPARK award winner 2008
The brief from the client, Arts Alliance, was a for a mobile performance venue capable of hosting an audience of 4000 people plus artists and back of house functions, that could travel the world with the minimum of impact on environment, to be low cost and which could be erected in less than two weeks. The internal theatre space was to be free of structure .The large scale required to accommodate the brief (90m by 40m on plan) and the long internal spans arising from the column free space led to the adoption of a ‘bicycle wheel’ roof of cables tensioned against an outer stiff compression ring. The outer ring and its supports are constructed from off the shelf stage set components enabling quick and easy erection by teams of stage riggers. The entire structure was encased in an inflatable PVC envelope which allowed it to pack down into a incredibly small volume. We were able to model the surface of the envelope and set out the hexagons such that the size of inflatable tube repeated was much as possible.
The building was awarded a World Architecture prize in 2009.