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Arthur Ashe Stadium Debuted A New Retractable Roof During The US Open

As the 136th U.S. Open comes to a close, the world’s best tennis players weren’t the only main attractions during this tournament. Arthur Ashe Stadium unveiled a long-awaited retractable roof that was designed to help prevent long suspensions of play during inclement weather.

The roof, which began design in 2011 was built over the current Arthur Ashe Stadium to create the look as if it was built during the original stadium construction. The roof was designed by Rossetti, an architectural design and planning firm headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. According to lead designer Jon Disbrow, “Rossetti took it upon ourselves to look at way that we could try to accomplish the United States Tennis Association’s goal of building a roof over the stadium and work with the existing stadium.”

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Images vis USOpen.org

Rossetti originally proposed to remove the upper bowl of the stadium replace it with a lightweight composite material to add on to the existing structure. “The original design would have worked with the existing foundation, but the operating time was longer than USTA wanted,” said Disbrow. The proposed design would take approximately 20 minutes to open and close and could be affected by wind or precipitation, so at this point of feedback Rossetti headed back to the drawing board to create a new design for the roof.

According the Disbrow, the soil quality at Arthur Ashe Stadium is very poor. Arthur Ashe Stadium was built on old ash dump for New York City, therefore the current soil subsides around a half inch per year without any additional weight being put on the ground; which is part of the reason the structure needed to be as lightweight as possible.

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The final design of the roof came as a separate structure that would be held up by eight columns, one at the corner of each existing bowl. The strategy became to create an “umbrella like” structure to work with the current stadium geometry. Not only did the roof have to be functional, it had to look appealing while still holding true to the original stadium design.

The current roof is comprised of a very stable fabric-wrapped panels that move on rails. The roof travels at a speed of 25 feet per minute and can go from completely open to closed in just five minutes. Four winches are used to open and close the roof in a system similar to gantry and bridge crane technology. The roof covers a total area of 236,600 sq. ft. and weighs 6,500 tons. unspecified-3

Creating a structure that can cover the entire stadium not only helps keep playing going during inclement weather, but also helps keeping fans and players cool throughout the day. “The roof shields about 90 percent of light but allows 10 percent to get in, making it a cooler area for everyone,” said Disbrow. Lighting was another task to be taken into consideration during the design of the roof and to create a solution there were 360 LED sports lights installed to light the roof.

Although the retractable roof is the new crown jewel of Arthur Ashe Stadium, it wasn’t the only thing included in the re-design. The stadium now offers four new scoreboards located on each side of the stadium, giving fans in any section the ability to view the board without having to turn their head.

The roof made it’s debut on August 31st during a match between Rafael Nadal and Andreas Seppi. Opening in just under five and a half minutes the roof was the talk of the day. The roof even seems to have a mind of its own as it was tweeting throughout the U.S. Open giving people an idea of how it was feeling throughout the tournament that ultimately saw Stan Wawrinka defeat the world number one Novak Djokovic in four sets:

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