Pusan Stadium, South Korea

A collaboration of several European Companies, the Pusan Stadium in Korea was built for the Football World Cup in 2002.

The stadium incorporates 120,000sqm of PTFE coated glass fibre to provide cover for the 55,982 spectators below. Described as “futuristic in design” and “like an alien craft” the structure is built in the shadow of the impressive Baek Yang Mountain on the coast of South Korea.

Architen’s expertise in the design manufacture and project management of large scale tensile structure meant that we were responsible for the engineering and detailing of the fabric membrane for the roof. All the fabric membrane details and attachment junctions were engineered and forwarded to local steel firms for construction.

Over 120 fabric biaxial tests were undertaken to allow suitable compensations for the multiple batches of PTFE fabric used in the roof. Architen then cut all the fabric templates used for the roof in our UK factory before shipping to Eastern Europe where 6 of our production staff trained and then supervised a multi-shift workforce of 60 in the assembly of PTFE structures allowing them to weld the panels together.

The roof panels were then shipped to Pusan where local installation crews tensioned them into the circular dome. The stadium went on to become one of the magnificent venues that made the Korean hosted World Cup Series. a resounding success