Millennium Dome
General information
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Location address
Greenwich Peninsular London
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Location country
United Kingdom
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Year of construction
1996
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Name of the client/building owner
The New Millennium Experience Company Limited
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Function of building
Exhibition
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Climatic zone
Temperate - cold winters and mild summers
Description
The Millennium Dome located on the Greenwich peninsular. The largest structure of its kind in the world, it incorporates every discipline within Buro Happold and every UK office in some capacity or another. A huge stressed cable net, 320m in diameter clad in PTFE fabric. A groundbreaking, award winning feat of engineering, that pushes back the bounds to reveal an exciting possibility for engineering in the twentieth century.
In concept, the structure of the dome is innovative yet apparently simple. In shape the roof surface is a spherical cap. Twelve 100m high steel masts support a tensioned net of steel cables, arranged radially on the surface of the dome and held in space by hangar and tie-down cables at 25m intervals. A 30m-diameter cable ring restrains the centre of the cable net. A compression ring beam and vertical ground anchors at the perimeter restrain tension forces. Between the cables, panels of tensioned PTFE-coated glass fibre fabric, in all 80 000m2 (the size of 13 football pitches) enclose the dome. An inner layer reduces solar gain and improves thermal and acoustic performance.
Description of the environmental conditions
The engineering service team envisaged the Dome as an umbrella, like a grand railway station, which visitors would enter dressed according to the external climate.
The aim is a tempered environment. Fresh air is introduced by natural ventilation at the perimeter and air-handling units in the service cores; will slightly cool or warm the air according to the season.
Power, water, chilling and communication is provided by 12 drum like service pods set around the perimeter of the Dome.
Material of the cover
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Cable-net/Fabric/Hybrid/Foil
Foil
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Material Fabric/Foil
Glass
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Material coating
PTFE
Main dimensions and form
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Covered surface (m2)
80000
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Total length (m)
320
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Total width (m)
320
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Form single element
Anticlastic
Duration of use
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Temporary or permanent structure
Temporary
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Design lifespan in years
06-10
Involved companies
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Architects
Richard Rogers Partnership
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Engineers
Buro Happold