ETIHAD ARENA

This is a project that have been delivered during the XD House Founder experience working for the international pioneering building envelope manufacturer and supplier Kingspan Insulated Panels.

Etihad Arena is the Middle East’s largest state-of-the-art indoor entertainment venue built on the stunning waterfront of Yas Island Abu Dhabi’s leisure and holiday hub. This indoor venue seats 18,000 guests and is designed to host world class concerts, sport events and corporate functions. It is Abu Dhabi’s first large scale indoor live event arena. The design of the arena is inspired by the woven mesh of the baskets used by the Bedouin tribes which reflects the well-known and world-famous Arabic hospitality. The project was awarded the Sustainable Design of the Year at the MENA Green Buildings Award in 2018.

A GEOMETRIC CHALLENGE

The building geometry was still being designed while we were invited to work on the project. In order to overcome this challenge, we used a parametric design approach on a BIM workflow where the multi layers of the roofing system could be changed and adapted to the steel design development with regards to geometric interfacing and behavior. One of the benefits of using the parametric design approach was that we were able to issue fabrication cutlists from the generated design automatically. This approach also minimized the time spent on detailing all the interfaces of roof system after the steel design was finalized.

Using laser scanning technology, the as-built of the steel structure was captured and reported back to the design workflow using the generated point cloud models.  This QAQC procedure insured accurate date, and later on accurate cut list for the materials that was sent of to the site for installation.