This is the most ambitious stadium ever constructed.
Designed like no other and covering almost 300,000 square metres, the venue is partly
set below ground to avoid the LAX flight path, and boasts open sides, a vast canopy roof,
shimmering lights and an 80-million-pixel video board.
Easily the most expensive stadium built by mankind to date, the venue will become home
to the LA Rams and the Chargers - and is set to host the Olympic Games in 2028.
This is what a USD $5 billion super stadium looks like.
When sports mogul Stan Kroenke took control of the St Louis Rams in 2010, he set about
bringing the team back to LA.
With a large area of land acquired in Inglewood four years later, the team officially returned in 2016
and temporarily played at the LA Memorial Coliseum,
while work to construct their jaw-dropping new home began.
Owned by the Rams, the Chargers would relocate from San Diego and share the ground as tenants.
Set in a 300-acre entertainment complex, the SoFi Stadium would become one of the greatest
venues ever conceived.
By almost every metric the building is in a league of its own.
It’s the most expensive venue ever built and the stadium is the largest in the NFL by floor area.
There’s almost 300,000 square metres of useable space.
The near-70,000 seat capacity can be expanded to 100,000 - and there are 260 luxury suites.
But while SoFi’s scale is off the charts, its ground-breaking design is what truly sets it apart.
HKS Architects wanted a clean break with the Colosseum-style format that most new stadiums
still follow today and devised a unique hybrid approach.
It has all the advantages of an open-sided outdoor venue - with cool air able to flow
around the arena - and the protective benefits of an enclosed stadium.
Consisting of the main arena and a separate 6,000-seat performance space, the entire venue
sits under a 90,000-square-metre ETFE roof canopy suspended by a double cable net support system -
the largest of its kind in the world.
The use of a specially manufactured white metal for the canopy gives the roof a different
appearance depending on your proximity to the stadium and the time of day.
From a distance the roof appears as one solid piece, but the presence of small holes in
the surface up close gives it a more translucent look. And while the canopy shines white in
the daytime, it reflects the LA sunset at dusk and teams with colour changing LEDs at night.
At the venue’s heart sits the double-sided Oculus - an 80-million-pixel, 360-degree,
4K display that is the largest video board ever created for a sports venue.
Building a super stadium in this particular location came with some serious challenges.
With the site sitting close to LAX, the project team had to adhere to strict height restrictions
and engineers set more than 30 metres of the venue below ground - ensuring it could be
big enough for the Super Bowl, while keeping it low enough to avoid disrupting flight paths.
The stadium also sits next to the Newport-Inglewood fault line. To protect the structure against
possible earthquakes, the large columns that hold up the roof are fitted with isolators
at either end to absorb seismic energy and prevent damage to the canopy.
Breaking ground in November 2016, record rainfall a year later delayed the stadium’s completion
from 2019 to the 2020 season.
Now around 97% complete, the stadium found itself at the mercy of external events again
in 2020 as the pandemic swept the world.
Originally set to open in July, social distancing measures on the site mean that completion
has now been slightly postponed while an inaugural event by Taylor Swift has been cancelled.
Despite these setbacks, the new stadium - with its unparalleled scale, cutting-edge features
and trail-blazing design - is about to give LA the world-class venue it’s long waited for.
Add in SoFi Stadium’s planned hosting of the Super Bowl in 2022 and the Olympic Games
in 2028, and its status as an icon is almost assured.
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