The Steel Structure of the Year is one of the most important Finnish architecture awards. The award goes to a construction project that is architecturally of a high standard and uses steel and other metals insightfully in the construction phase.
The independent award committee, chaired this year by architect SAFA Ted Schauman, from Schauman & Nordgren Architecs Ab, chose the Tammela stadium in Tampere as the winner of the 2023 Steel Structure Award from among the proposals sent to the Steel Structure Association. The award was announced at the Steel Structure Day in Helsinki on November 22.11.
In the Tammela district of Tampere, Finland's first block stadium has been built by the alliance of the City of Tampere, Pohjola Rakennus Oy Suomen and JKMM Arkkitehdit Oy, implemented by JKMM Architects Samuli Miettinen, architect SAFA, acting as the main designer of the stadium. Without the playing field, a total of about 13500 m2,'s stadium, which has a warm apartment area of about 3500 m2, connects seamlessly to the block network of a big city, offering high-level opportunities for all city residents' ball-playing hobbies, Uefa's highest category 4 conditions for playing and watching top football, and good facilities for organizing various public events. The stadium, operated by Ilves Edustus Oy, has an audience capacity of 8000 people for football matches, and a maximum of 15000 people for concerts and gatherings. Every seat in the stands has an unobstructed view of the pitch, meaning the stands are free of pillars.
The new stadium, created with the alliance's close and well-run cooperation, continues the traditions of "Paltsu", built in Tammela in the 1930s for football. The city wanted to keep the ball field in its traditional location while taking into account the area's densification needs. In the project, the stadium implemented by the alliance and the associated residential buildings and business premises, the construction of which as an integrated project implementation is not the responsibility of the alliance, solve the urban visual, architectural, structural and traffic challenges creatively within the framework of a compact block structure and at the same time respecting the character and scale of the area.
The award committee commends the project for its success in terms of urban image and urban development, the idea of combining housing and football, and the desire to create an ambitious stadium on the scale of Finland in terms of capacity and quality, which will successfully continue Tampere's high-quality sports venue construction in recent years.
In the Tammela stadium, the architecture is tectonic in nature, marked by structural form and joints. Architecture gives structure meaning, and structure gives architecture form by articulating its details. The structure is appropriate and serves the function. Looking up close, the details of the structure are solid, even rugged, but looking further away, they form lightly graphic, even poetic, lines.
Structurally, the award committee was particularly attracted by the insightful suspension bridge solution, which is unusual in terms of steel structures, and the unobstructed views from all the stands brought by the lack of pillars. The designer of the particularly demanding steel structures used in the project has been Ramboll Finland Oy, which collaborated with JKMM Architects in the invitational competition already organized for the project, the manufacturer Teräselementti Oy and the installer Temacon Finland Oy, all of whom have played a decisive role in achieving a successful end result.
The roof curving over the block in an east-west direction is the most characteristic feature of the landmark. In part of the stadium, the shape repeats the structure of the suspended steel canopies over a hundred meters long. The shape also continues in the roofs of the residential buildings to be built in connection with the stadium, which both fits the block into the environment and tells about its nature as a public building. The low part of the arch is located on the longitudinal central axis of the field, so the canopy does not shade the field or the school yard on the north side. The stands of the new stadium rise immediately from the edges of the field, typical of the best football stadiums. In addition to the canopies, the spectators are protected by the glass entrance ends, which protect the field from the wind and maintain the spatial connection between the stadium and its surroundings.
The entrances to the stadium are located under the end grandstands and the field maintenance is located in the northwest corner of the block. The stadium's audience facilities go around the field. The main stand is on the eastern edge of the field, the restaurant, VIP and press stands on the western edge. During the planning process, an audience loft was added to the space program above the main grandstand, which achieved the characteristics required by the Uefa 4 category. The building's lighting supports the dramatic arc of the stadium's events. The building is designed for experiences, which supports visual artists Tommi Grönlund ja Petteri Nisunen The light artwork created on the underside of the canopies, "Puolenvaihto".
Materials and structures condensed
The pillars are mainly steel union pillars and cast-in-place reinforced concrete wall and slab structures. At each corner of the stadium there is a slanted pillar, the lower part of which is a reinforced concrete structure and the upper part is a prefabricated steel branch pillar in two parts. There is a steel cuff around the top part, which is welded to the steel branch pillar placed at the top, and attached at the construction site. The steel branch columns receive the compressive load of the gable roofs and lead them through the basement to the foundations. Thanks to them, the force load is not applied to residential buildings, whose renovation and life cycle are thus independent of the stadium.
WQ-beams on the side of the restaurant grandstand and Concrete beams in the lower grandstand of the main grandstand and welded I-beams in the mezzanine stand serve as beam structures. Cast-in-place reinforced concrete wall and slab structures serve as the load-bearing structures of the end grandstands.
The intermediate floors are mainly of hollow slab and in some places cast-in-place structures. Cast-in-place reinforced concrete slab structures serve as the load-bearing structures of the end stands. The platform structures of the stands are L-shaped reinforced concrete element structures.
The structure of the gable roofs is a bridge-like suspended structure supported by six cables. The cables are supported by reinforced concrete structures at the ends of the canopy and by a slanted pillar structure to the cast-in-place reinforced concrete structures of the end stand. The cables support element structures made of steel beams, which are locked to the cables. The steel beam elements act as stiffening structures for the water roof, which transfer forces from one element to another with horizontal shear-resistant joints. They allow the roof to bend and the cables to stretch.
The shape of the vertical steel structures of the end glass walls follows the mechanical forces acting on them. The end stand supports the steel structure of the structurally glazed glass wall of the facade with a joint that allows movement. The lower end of the glass walls attached to the concrete slab is hinged, allowing lateral movement of the upper end of the wall. The eave structure allows vertical movement of the suspended canopy when the snow loads the roof unevenly.
The roof structures of the side stands are supported by steel pylon structures. The steel beam of the roof structure rests on the pylon structures both with direct connections and with steel rods attached between the pylon and the steel beam. Each pylon is supported by three traction anchors anchored to the rock, which are placed inside the wall on the side of the apartments in a protective pipe.
Load-bearing profile sheets rest on top of the steel beams, the joints of which take into account the movements between the element structures made of steel beams. On top of the profile sheet, the water roof is made with kate plywood and a light bituminous cream roof that cleans air pollution. The side canopies and the end canopies are separated from each other with an expansion joint, which takes into account the movements of the structures.
The outer perimeter of the block is light brick and the ends are glass and perforated steel sheet. The cast-in-place concrete surfaces of the entrances continue into the interior of the stadium, the character of which is determined by the steel structures. The green artificial grass of the playing field is a stage for football the size of an opening in the roof.
The Steel Structure of the Year is awarded
- Subscriber City of Tampere
- JKMM Arkkitehdit Oy was responsible for the main and architectural design
- Main contractor Pohjola Rakennus Oy Finland
- Structural designer Ramboll Finland Oy
- Supplier of steel structures Teräselementti Oy
- Installer of steel structures Temacon Finland Oy
The winner of the Steel Structure of the Year award is always selected by an independent award committee, whose members are appointed by e.g. SAFA, RIL and RIA, and whose chairman represents the architects of the previous year's winner. This year, architect SAFA Ted Schauman from Schauman & Nordgren Architecs Ab has acted as the chairman of the design group for the Turku market pavilions that won the Steel Structure of the Year award in 2022.
An honorable mention for the world's highest railway bridge
The award committee that chose this year's Steel Structure of the Year also decided to award an honorable mention to the Chenab Bridge, the world's highest railway bridge connecting the regions of Jammu and Kashmir in India. The bridge represents the export of high-level Finnish design know-how, WSP Finland Oy acted as the main consultant and main designer of the bridge, which was implemented as a desing and build project. In addition, Leonhardt, Andrä und Partner participated in the design as a sub-consultant for WSP Finland, mainly for the arch section. The bridge was contracted by Afcons Infrastructure Ltd from Mumbai, one of India's largest construction companies, and the customer was KONKAN Railway Corporation Limited, which operates the track.
The Chenab Bridge is a 1315 meter long arch bridge with a main span of 467 meters. The deck of the bridge is 362 meters above the surface of the river Chenab flowing below. The light and beautiful-looking bridge is actually very large, as it consists of a 765-meter-long steel arch bridge and a 530-meter-long access bridge, where the superstructures are steel and the substructures are concrete. The arch and the pillars of the arch bridge are steel trusses to minimize the wind load on the structure. The design was based on WSP Finland's wind tunnel tests and a thorough calculation analysis of wind behavior based on them.
The design also had to take into account the special blast load. The bridge was practically designed for two explosion scenarios and with its implementation prevents damage to the bridge arch and the collapse of the bridge deck and enables the removal of critical structural parts one at a time without collapsing the bridge and so that despite this, train traffic can still continue at a reduced speed.
3D modeling of all steel structures using the Tekla Structures program and the transfer of modeling know-how to the implementation organization was an important part of WSP Finland's work, which also included making shop drawings of the bridge structures.
In very mountainous terrain, the entire new rail line will be built on tunnels and bridges. The award committee rightly stated that, in its opinion, a stunning and socially very significant bridge could not have been made in practice other than as a steel structure. The steel arch and the steel pillars of the main bridge have been installed with a suspension bridge crane, which could transport up to 34 tons of steel parts into place at a time. Success in this destination as well is a whole created by design, manufacturing and installation.
The release is based on submitted competition proposals and the awards committee's evaluations.
More information about the Steel Structure of the Year is provided by:
- property manager Virpi Ekholm, City of Tampere, 040 020 5044 or virpi.ekholm@tampere.fi
- project manager Antti Lakka, City of Tampere spatial services, 040 553 8008 or antti.lakka@tilapa.fi
- chief designer Samuli Miettinen, architect SAFA, JKMM Arkkitehdit, 040 722 0271 or samuli.miettinen@jkmm.fi
- responsible special designer of structures Ilkka Mikkola, Ramboll Finland, 040 689 9104 or ilkka.mikkola@ramboll.fi
- hall and steel construction unit manager Mikael Rinne, Teräselementti, 040 539 8057 or mikael.rinne@teraselementti.fi
- installation manager Tero Manu, Temacon Finland, 020 155 0160 or tero.manu@temacon.fi
- Business Director Erkki Ikonen, Pohjola Rakennus Finland, 050 539 7068 or erkki.ikonen@pohjolarakennus.fi
- chairman of the award committee Ted Schauman, architect SAFA Schauman & Nordgren Architects, 050 538 3577 or ted@schauman-nordgren.com
- secretary of the award committee, CEO of Teräsrakenneyhdistys ry Timo Koivisto, 050 408 1163 or timo.koivisto@tryry.fi
More information about Chenan Bridge can be found at WSP Finland Oy:
- Pekka Pulkkinen, leading expert bridges, 040 046 5900 or pekka.pulkkinen@wsp.com