Singapore celebrated the opening of Asia’s first integrated sports, leisure, entertainment and lifestyle destination – the Singapore Sports Hub – in June 2014. Located on a 35ha waterfront site, within easy reach of the city centre and international airport, the Sports Hub is key to the Singapore government’s urban development plan and central to its 2020 vision for a sustainable, healthy and expanding population.
At the heart of the Sports Hub lies the new National Stadium, conceived as a unifying protective canopy that connects all parts of the Sports Hub masterplan. The dome to the stadium has a span of more than 310m, making it the largest free-spanning dome structure in the world. Aircooled, and designed with a movable roof and retractable seating for a wide range of sport and leisure events, it is a state-of-the-art stadium.
This article focuses primarily on how the engineering for the National Stadium was defined, while also providing an overview of the inputs that shaped the design of the wider precinct – from the original masterplan to specialist engineering concepts developed for integrated energy infrastructure, environmental and microclimate design, acoustics, fire engineering, pedestrian modelling, sports and feature lighting design.