Cape Town Stadium

Set against the backdrop of Table Mountain, Cape Town Stadium is one of South Africa’s most iconic sporting venues, designed to host international football and rugby matches as well as major entertainment events. Its distinctive roof structure combines architectural elegance with advanced engineering, creating a world-class venue recognized far beyond the country’s borders.

The roof structure is a suspended roof consisting of ring and radial cables as well as radial lattice girders. This sub structure bears the roof cladding consisting of laminated safety glass on a steel grid as well as the translucent membrane in the interior. The space between the glass roof cladding and the membrane integrates technical elements such as the PA/sound system and illumination; in adition it offers protection from bad weather and serves as sound absorbing volume.

The cable structure as well as the roof glazing is of high complexity and has enormous numbers of individual components used in construction. The logistic challenges as well as the required coordination of all parties involved in this type of construction, required all of PFEIFER Structures personnel´s expertise.

The result is the largest glass façade ever done on top of a stadium. It convinces through its high aesthetic appeal and its elegance and proves that “light cable structures“ are the option also for stadia of this size.

The glass panels are individually placed on the steel grid in a freely floating manner, in order to be able to withstand the enormous movement they are subject to. This represented one of the biggest planning challenges due to the fact that the notorious Cape winds cause the roof to oscillate with an amplitude of +/- 1 meter. Due to the roof’s undulating shape, some 4,500 of the altogether 9,000 glass panes are model panes that had to be tailor-made for their respective position in the roof. The membrane spans distances of 8-13 m from radial cable to radial cable across the roof’s length of some 40 m.