VISION Issue 44 | Page 21

21 Any glazing tricks or techniques you’ve used? Lessons learned along the way? Lessons learnt from this project in terms of glass is to get your engineering models done early because they really do inform what happens with the rest of the building. Understanding what products are available, what visibility you’re trying to achieve. And in this particular situation one of our key drivers was trying to ensure the glass for the inner bowl is as clear as possible. We don’t want to have any sort of obstruction from the actual inside space. We literally want to make you feel when you’re standing inside the social club, or standing inside the Members’ bar, that it’s seamless. You’re just viewing straight out onto the pitch. Were there many complexities, or specific challenges? We’ve talked about some of the advantages of the glass but obviously it’s not just about clarity, you still need glass to be insulating acoustically and thermally in many instances. Why not just use plasterboard? You can build essentially whatever you want but it will cost exponentially. We needed to work within the limitations of the product in this case, the way we structured the mullions and worked with the floor plates. We worked on that quite early on in the process to be able to get as much free-span glass as possible to meet the project’s budget. “[It’s] not your normal stadium. We’ve got function rooms, cafés and retail merchandise that come together to form a really cohesive, interesting, experience.” BRAYDEN GOODWIN, ARCHITECT