this is china in the space of just one generation it's grown into the world's second largest economy transforming cities connecting its regions harnessing the power of nature and taking a central if occasionally controversial role in global affairs but while these feats are all very impressive they mean little if no one actually knows about them to capture the world's attention and showcase the nation china's built some of the most impressive sporting infrastructure on earth in recent years but
its latest complex takes things into a whole new league [Music] this is the phoenix mountain sports park in chengdu it's yet another big glitzy and impressive sports venue in china but it's different from the others to really understand how it came about and why it looks like this we need to rewind a bit china's transformation over the past 30 years blows the mind the economic reforms of the 1980s have seen its cities explode and small towns are now huge metropolises the country's built two-thir
ds of the world's entire high-speed rail network in just 12 years and it's now an undisputed manufacturing powerhouse but to really get noticed by the world china knew it needed to do something big and in a language that everyone understood massive multinational sporting events are powerful ways for countries to show the world what they're about or that they've officially arrived we saw it at tokyo's first olympics back in 1964. china wanted to host one of these and began seriously developing it
s talent after ranking 11th at the 1988 seoul olympics the country came back and has finished in the top five at every game since when beijing hosted the olympics in 2008 china amazed the world with its opening and closing ceremonies and topped the medal table a feat it repeated in 2010 when the asian games were held in guangzhou it's since been awarded the 2021 world university games the 2022 winter olympics and asian games and to top it all off the 2023 afc asian cup less than a year later but
the country is keen to learn from the challenges of the past because some venues built to host previous events both here and around the world have sat largely inactive afterwards due to a lack of natural demand for such specific infrastructure there's now a new approach and sports venues are being built with both community and legacy in mind the new phoenix mountain sports park in chengdu is a pretty textbook example of this it's set to host the now delayed 2021 summer world university games an
d the afc asian cup in 2023 but it's conceived as a public meeting place where the local community can gather throughout the year regardless of what's on the sporting calendar the 43 hectare complex is more like a public square for the emerging jinnu district with a world first conjoined 60 000 seat fifa grade football stadium and an 18 000 seat multi-purpose arena at its heart the site's been designed to host exhibitions concerts and festivals among its extensive landscaping and 128 000 square
meters of mixed-use hotel and retail facilities the main stadium itself is pretty epic nodding to chengdu's history is supposed to resemble a traditional sichuan bowl of tea from above while its dynamic exterior makes use of layers and materials that mimic silk threads playing with light and shadow to create a visual experience that changes throughout the day completed in february 2021 the stadium is now the largest in china dedicated to football it connects to the neighboring arena via a multi-
use bridge structure that contains club rooms and facilities for both venues with retractable seating and stage options the venue was designed with flexibility in mind and can cater to everything from concerts and basketball to ice hockey and table tennis [Music] but it's incredible adaptability is nothing compared to its roof the structure is one of the largest curved and open cable dome roofs and the largest curved etfe membrane structure in the world now all stadium projects are complex but p
hoenix mountain's world first design technical challenges and extremely tight schedule of just two and a half years from design to completion put it in a league of its own to complete the project by its immovable 2021 deadline the team used a range of software from autodesk's aec collection and autodesk construction cloud preliminary designs and construction drawings were created on autocad while in-depth models of the structure mep services and the membrane roof were all produced in revit from
which information and schedules to share with manufacturers were created the team then basically used the bim 360 platform from autodesk construction cloud to build test and coordinate the entire project in a virtual environment before then doing it all for real out on the sports park they effectively made all their mistakes and picked up issues in the 360 software which is a much less costly place to do it than on the live construction site before a single beam had been lifted the team had digi
tally pre-assembled the building to confirm the construction process the approach reduced risk and helped them tackle the project's immense challenges once the physical work started they completed just 730 days later 30 faster than a similar size stadium the projects actually managed to reverse the infamous trend set by many other stadiums in the lead up to a major sporting event completing 132 days ahead of schedule [Music] that would have meant a whole lot more had the wonderful coronavirus no
t postponed the 2021 world university games by a year but it's an achievement nonetheless and it saved a projected 14.5 million us dollars on the project [Music] in recent years the appeal of hosting major sporting events has been on the wane around the world even with the economic business cases the eye-watering capital costs often put governments off there are a fair few olympic horror stories about and the pandemic's impact on the tokyo games is surely any city's worst nightmare but chengdu's
approach is one to look to at their best sports venues not only do a great job of hosting major events but become the focal points for communities they create the space for people to come together to share in sport music or culture they become the facilities where the next generation of athletes develop and they trigger long-term economic prosperity phoenix mountain seems set to follow in the footsteps of some of the world's most successful sports infrastructure to date confirming china's posit
ion as a sporting superpower but moving it into a more community-centric phase this video was made possible by autodesk construction cloud you can learn more about that at the link below and as always if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction make sure you subscribe to the b1m you
Comments