Copper Box Arena, London
The Copper Box Arena is a multi-purpose facility capable of seating 7,500 people. The venue was constructed on the Olympic Park in London to host Handball and modern pentathlon events at the 2012 Olympic Games. The arena is now a multi purpose venue catering for sporting and entertainment events.
The legacy use of the arena required the inclusion of features specifically to enable concert events to be hosted whilst the Games use of the venue also required strict acoustic criteria to be achieved in order to facilitate paralympic events for blind athletes (who use an amazing sensitivity to sound to locate each other and the ball during games).
CLIENT: BGCL
COMPLETION DATE: 2012
CAPACITY: 7,500
PROJECT COST: £30M
The solution required an integrated approach to architectural and mechanical services elements to provide a noise floor equivalent to a concert hall and venue acoustics appropriate for high powered amplified events.
The tiered seating has been provided with displacement ventilation to bring low velocity air into the bowl underneath each seat. This system has also been customised to provide air inlets at the arena floor level which also allow a retractable seating system to operate.
The internal surfaces of the arena have been designed to provide sound diffusion and sound absorption. The roof of the arena provides an integrated solution to both minimise sound break-out from the venue and to provide reverberation control inside the arena bowl.
The result is a unique multi-purpose venue that is able to host events in numerous configurations.