Extreme Constructions: Singapore's Field of Dreams | Free Documentary

the Singapore Sports Hub has arrived the world's ultimate multi-function Sports Complex like a giant Transformer it adapts to host more than 30 different sports the sports in general it's amazing it's because it's the state of the art and its crowning glory is the New National Stadium we needed to create a world class venue a landmark building The Sports Hub has been an epic three-year Journey welcome to my office an army of workers risk life and limb to create the stadium nine other multi-purpose venues and the world's largest free spanning dome roof a bold Vision that is now Singapore's Field of [Music] Dreams June the 28th 2014 it's openhouse day at Singapore's brand new National Sports Center a place where everyone can play the typical conception of a stadium is that it's a place where you hold big events when you're not having a big event it lies empty and quiet so we wanted The Sports Hub to be alive all the time some place where singaporeans will come on a regular basis not just for big events but to take part in events [Music] themselves The Sports Hub is jam-packed with features a 55,000 seat Stadium Sports Halls water sports center public water Park Indoor Aquatic Center and a multitude of community facilities including a museum a library and there's even a retail [Music] mall but this place is about much more than fitness and fun wow it's a fantastic Stadium but it's got a big job to buat the Old National Stadium The Sports Hub is also the proud new home of a great tradition a tradition that began on another memorable opening day 40 years ago I now declare this stadium open thank you in 1973 Singapore's brand new National Stadium was a monument to a young nation's unity and pride and a symbol of its determination to make its Mark in the world of sport [Music] that year the National Stadium hosted the Southeast Asian Peninsula games an unforgettable moment for Singapore and for Singapore's greatest Sprinter C kunalan calan the National Stadium has a special meaning to me uh I have a lot of feelings for it I did make a comeback for the 1973 sea game that Singapore hosted for the first time it was such a thrill to run the race the stadium really has good feelings for me retired from racing kunalan made a comeback just to light the opening flame but it led to much more I was way past my Peak when the National Stadium was open I had a call from the coaches and and they said hey kunalan we like you to run for the four time 400 and I said are you kidding I've not been training since 1970 then they said hey no no no come on this is for Singapore the stadium really has good feelings for [Applause] me Canan and his team won a silver medal at the 1973 sea games and in the stands of the National Stadium Another Hero was born as a teenager I remember uh the first time I went to the stadium to watch watch uh uh seames 1973 I was sitting right behind the goal and I was wondering to myself how they become national players the boy from the stands became the greatest footballer in Singapore history playing 101 matches for his country and scoring an incredible 55 [Applause] goals Singapore my best goal for Singapore was in 1983 Southeast Asian game Singapore versus Malaysia I received a pass and I managed to beat Santos Singh one of the stopper and the captain as well before I dribble on the by line and then squeeze the ball past the goalkeeper I remember those days was a fantastic years of Singapore football because of the famous Kang ra the stamping and of course some of my friends when we were playing they used to sell drinks parttime drinks Kachi that's a famous word and the blower the National Stadium was my best hunting ground of all time I've scored many goals memorable goals for my club and especially for my country Singapore but almost four decades since its opening the national Stadium's race had run our National Stadium was beginning to look quite old and our aquatic stadium in Topo both of these were built in 1973 when we first hosted the sea games and we all wanted to see modern facilities the problem was where to put them vacant land is almost impossible to find here Singapore's new home of sport would have to be built where its old one already stood the kalang basin so the old stadium had to go in September 2010 the bulldozers moved in when I found out that National Stadium will be demolish not only me all my friend teammates we were surprised and very sad although I did feel that it was a big part of me big part of Singapore uh when he was finally decided that the only way was to demolish and rebuild um I was in support the way I look at it is sacrificing for the greater good of for the future and can you imagine our young people they are not going to be thrilled by their old stadium so you know when they see this Hub they will be thrilled so I think it's for the better the the entire Sports Hub project has to be completed in under 4 years so there's not a moment to lose even a national icon has to come down fast it's now November 2010 3 months after demolition began and lead engineer Liu U sin knows he needs to pick up the pace it's a bit of pressure because uh time is short we have to work very hard but a giant obstacle is standing in his path the Stadium's iconic 68 M light towers these Mighty Towers were made to last several lifetimes and they're far too tall to be safely demolished by heavy duty Crushers Le's team consider using explosives but flying debris could damage neighboring buildings so they decide to try a rarely used demolition technique by slicing the towers into four manageable pieces the crew can bring down one piece at a time and crush it at ground level but they can't slice the towers with an ordinary steel saw so Leu turns to the Ultimate Weapon in his demolition Arsenal the diamond saw the white part is the diamond inside it is steel wire steel wire with with uh rubber when the machine start the motor will pull the Diamond Wire and the the Diamond Wire will start cutting the the tower a stream of water Keeps The Cutting cable cool if it overheats the wire will expand jam and then snap with terrifying consequences if it's break if someone stand nearby it will snap at somebody and it will injure somebody as if deadly Diamond studded wires aren't enough to worry about a thunderstorm suddenly appears on the horizon if heavy rains come and there's lining we have to stop work because this will endanger our life with a ground team keeping an eye on the menacing clouds Leu presses on so the tension [Applause] okay oh finally after a full day's work the diamond saw slices through that's the first of three cuts on this Tower and there's still another three towers to go while 's team reduces the old stadium to dust that's the challenge a design team of local architects too highin C Chi hang along with Clive Lewis were working overtime on its replacement have it mechanical exhaust means it's starts to act like a I think we are struggling with the identity to arrive at the identity for the National Stadium they've had a hand in building some of the world's biggest stadiums including London's Wembley and beijing's bird's nest sing P's new stadium needs to be just as impressive it is supposed to be a National Stadium so we needed to create a world class venue but how do we Inspire to create a landmark the team turned to nature for [Music] inspiration they drafted designs sparked by tropical plants and experimented with curves and spaces after going through many design and many debates we started to appreciate a very simple structure so a simple Dome eventually was adopted and the trick then is how to make this simple structure look [Music] beautiful it's actually quite emotional to see how it has grown and we spent eight years of our life on the project but what we are really looking forward to is uh how we see our design translate from paper to the physical [Music] form the team designs a stadium that could comfortably hold the Sydney Opera house inside its shell it will be the largest free Spanish dome in the [Music] world by the end of the second year of construction most of the roof is in place so far the massive web of Steel has fitted together perfectly but only now when they ra the final roof truss into Position will the team find out if they've succeeded the worst case scenario is that uh during the lifting the trust cannot go inside if the trust cannot be fix we need to bring down the trust and do all over again this last truss spans 78 M and weighs a colossal 140 tons [Music] two of the largest cranes in Singapore will be taking on this Herculean lift if its operation isn't synchronized perfectly the cranes and the truss could come tumbling down and if the cranes aren't in exactly the right locations they can't lift the truss to where it needs to go but after 2 hours of delicate maneuvering the truss locks perfectly into position everything went so smooth it's perfect now I'm very happy that the TR is uh Final in position it's been a good day for the stadium Builders One Challenge met but so many more to come Singapore's new stadium will be of epic proportions and that's given its Builders another big challenge when you put a stadium that size just 1° north of the equator how do you keep thousands of people inside cool and dry [Music] you call in the Spider-Man Singapore's only rope access experts led by 8year veteran fousy razak okay this job is actually very very high risk but in terms of scate got used to it actually the Spider-Man start the day with a precarious 30-minute climb to the top welcome to my office The View it's beautiful they're risking their lives to make the lives of sports fans [Music] easier in the old days of the National Stadium sports fans had to endure tropical downpours and seating tear heated by hours under a baking sun but the design team knows that today's fans expect to be comfortable in all weather conditions to 28 seats in each of these rows so that's 20 to 28 seats to Shield fans from extreme weather the team has created a very special material to cover the roof a combination of insulating foam sandwich between two sheets of Highly reflective lightweight Steel by reflecting and absorbing solar energy it should block out most of the sun's Heat but first the Spider-Man have to install nearly 500 panels of it 80 M up the Spider-Man can't afford to make a single slip and they don't intend to even though I'm at 80 m above the ground I know I'm very very safe there will be always two ropes that will be attached to me if anything happen to the one I still have the other one so it's very very safe moving every roof panel into position depends on the Spider-Man okay okay okay ah it takes a little bit of time because because of the alignment and and everything so yeah we're doing good here just a few more minutes and we're done every day the team bolt on at least two of these roof panels weighing between 2 and 22 tons now it's uh it's the 107 installed I got one down here and we got 337 to go yeah far below the Spider-Man another state-of-the-art Sports venue is taking shape the sports hub's Aquatic Center will host not just swimming but also water polo synchronized swimming and diving competitions it will be equipped with the latest competitive swimming technology including electronic timer touchpads and underwater cameras that Sports scientists will use to train a new generation of elite Singaporean swimmers a super pool for future Champions and a dream come true for a living legend of Singapore pong Ang Pang xong was the winner of 1982's world's f fastest swimmer award and a year later as Singapore hosted the sea games he won Gold in his pet event the 50m freestyle but at the time Singapore lacked a world-class competition pool with the Olympic Games you see stadiums that are really uh magnificent and I thought it was uh quite appropriate to building a new facility I'm very happy that they decided to build it it looks really Grand to fulfill its Destiny as the center of Singapore sport the National Stadium will have to offer not just one but three different Playing Fields one for Cricket one for track and field events and one for football and rugby introducing moving seating was the obvious solution it's a fantastic opportunity to do everything in one space so we get three Sports configurations in one Stadium the design team came up with a simple but effective solution they placed more than half of the seating into movable lower tiers but how would those tiers change from one seating configuration to another the team decided to lift them with nothing but air raising them with high- Press air filled skates made of tough lowf friction Teflon then dragging them into position with powerful hydraulic claws but the system is untried and everything is riding on its first test moving 1/5 of a full tier section that weighs nearly 300 tons in line with the final position so installation is good for you failure would mean redesign Ing and rebuilding the entire system and would set the construction schedule back by months a lot of things could go wrong in fact uh the first one is we canot LIF thing anymore at all because everything is too heavy uh we could lose some too much pressure and land too soon or the Jack not strong enough here we have two Jack only but after we will have seven of them and they have to work all together in order to keep the lower tier sliding as a a straight line and not to churn the 300 ton tier moves without a hitch the construction of the eight moving tiers can now proceed as planned everything goes really pretty well some small uh Improvement to do but it's very good is very good it's a moment to savor but as nightfalls another the challenge looms engineers get ready to build one of the largest moving roofs in the [Music] world January 2014 the Epic task of building Singapore's new Sports Hub enters its final year the construction team's about to pull an all nighter installing one of the National Stadium's most impressive features its movable roof the wind is very strong up there so we need to be more careful careful indeed when the roof truss you're moving weighs 90 tons this is quite heavy it doesn't swing uh that much we just have to be patient when the wind is blowing we just there once the wind is calmer there then we start to lower it slowly and this will take for another uh 3 to 4 hours when that once that's done we will release the hook and that's complete the whole operation [Music] it takes 4 months to build the stadium roof when it's finished its Builders must make sure its two colossal halves actually do close lead engineer Arno joram's team of software Engineers mans the command center we have 3 kilm of tracks and the roof is 200 M so this is a large space to cover we are checking during the first movements that there is no clash between the Bogies and the track beams at the same time also we have sensors which have to be adjusted to check the position of the roof this is a lot of things to control at the same time vun vun can we move now it's clear now it's clear now okay CH we proceed [Music] the sliding roof's individual motors have to be precisely speed controlled so that the entire roof travels evenly for this first closing their speed is cautiously slow so far is going well the tension are okay mechanically everything is okay but the roof suddenly stops Arno and his team check all software systems and inspect all Motors and tracks but everything appears to be as it should until the team finally identifies the culprit one of the systems many sensors we have a lot of sensors in this in this roof to check the positions of all the runway tress and uh this has given a wrong information so now it has triggered the emergency stop can you check that uh is not clashing with the reader that we have no space this is more a matter of adjustments this is the purpose of the test to adjust all these sensor now doing pretensioning right okay uh North roof moving now okay yeah see the tensions between the North and the South looks almost the same looks good we still have another 60% uh to do before we manage to close the roof [Music] [Music] over [Music] there it's not fully closed because we are still in the process of doing the final works on the on the joint itself but the alignment is there already the alignment is correct the Stadium's retractable roof will be one of the largest in the world and it won't be the only place in The Sports Hub that can transform itself the Aquatic Center can convert its 50m Olympic pool into two 25 M Pools so athletes can train on one side while the public enjoy the other and staff at the two multi-purpose Arenas can reconfigure collapsible seating to suit a variety of sports like badminton table tennis basketball and gymnastics back in the stadium a father and son team are stepping up to a daunting task turning the world's biggest free spanning Dome into a world-class sound and visual stage for Dad Ronald it's a the case of deja vu 40 years ago he was at exactly the same spot facing just as big a mission at the old stadium we install the main sound system for the outdoor as well as for the indoor winning a contract for the Old National Stadium was a turning point for the family business it was the biggest project that I've ever done you know when I was 28 years old so you know it was was still actually green behind the years but and we had opportunity to work with good people uh in those days it was a very simple you know analog systems the system here is so much more complex so it is entirely a new ball game as compared to what we did 40 years ago today the Baton has passed to Sun Gary I feel really fortunate to have the opportunity to work to on the new National Stadium on the same exact side you know uh 30 something years later but filling this enormous space with concert quality sound will be the greatest test the family firm has ever faced the stadium is a it's a big acoustical environment so the challenge is to have as directional speaker as possible to ensure that you know all all the sound is directed towards the audience and not to the areas that you don't want sound at if Gary doesn't get the direction position and power of all the speakers right Spectators will hear a muddied incoherent mix of sounds the use of the the simulation software allows us to make very fine adjustments with the speaker positions to ensure that we are achieving Optimum coverage with minimum interference today workers are installing the first of 90 speakers Gary won't know if he's got it right until they're all in position and he's Pumped Up the Volume my dad has uh left pretty big shoes to fill and I definitely feel pressure with my my dad watching over me but uh that that's what sort of uh drives me to do even better at Top the stadium Dome another team takes on a very different Mission covering the movable roof with translucent and heat resistant plastic pillows ETF plastic the same material that was used on the Beijing Olympics water Cube the sports hub's etfe pillows will let full daylight in but block out most of the sun's heat so we only get 8% solar radiation through that material but we were able to get the effect of natural daylight within the space so that's quite an amazing material to be able to use it's also very very lightweight but in Singapore's yearr round 30° climate even the miracle of ETF won't be enough to keep the stadium cool if we can just drop the temperature very you know slightly four 5° that little bit of cooling and the air movement can make for a much more pleasant environment months of a construction Time air conditioning the entire would be too energy intensive and expensive in terms of the temperature range and the Comfort criteria temperature middle of the day so the team came up with a brilliantly simple alternative energy from an array of on-site solar cells Powers air conditioning the chilled air blows out from under every seat and uses less energy because it only cools the areas around the spectators so we we ended up with a a bowl cooling system that used about a fifth of the energy required uh when compared to a conventional air conditioned Stadium day after day year after year the sports hub's Builders have faced and met the challenges of turning a daring design into reality but now time's nearly up everything must be ready and work perfectly the ultimate test is only weeks away April 2014 the sports hub's scheduled completion is only weeks away more than a thousand workers are laboring around the clock to meet that [Music] deadline across town Greg Gillan has been confronting a very different challenge Greg growing the Stadium's grass we're currently out at the orid country club for the last 18 months this is where we've been destruction testing our Sports grass to try and find the toughest breed of turf for our Singapore Sports Hub National Stadium grass usually grows like crazy in Singapore's tropical climate but it's a much tougher life at the National Stadium because of the the 83 M DME we have very little exposure to sunlight so we have to come up with a different solution of a turf grass to find a grass that could cope with the unusual conditions Greg and his team test planted more than 15 varieties we had to try and recreate um our light and ventilation conditions um so what we did is we built the shade structure try and replicate the conditions inside the stadium at the end of the trial Greg came to a surprising conclusion we found that the Northern Hemisphere grass has adapted much much better to the stadium microclimate that we were trying to recreate out here the winner of the turf trials was a combination of Kentucky Bluegrass which gives toughness mixed with a faster germinating Ry grass that recovers quickly after events both were stitched into the surface last weekend and uh We've now started to see after 4 days um the grass starting to come through and we expect to see this come through in about another week the Stadium's new Turf had better grow up to be as tough as it's supposed to be life's not going to be easy the grass on this field will have to withstand some of the most punishing treatment in the world we could have up to 100 events a years that means we have to have a very robust sports turf so the players can run at the ball with confidence and don't not feel like they're going to slip or slide or injure themselves Greg decided to reinforce the Stadium's pitch with a high-tech artificial turf mixed with natural grass the deso grassmaster system uses strands of tough artificial fibers stitched 140 mm into the soil so what we've got here is a deso machine which acts like a giant sewing machine so these are the needles that Stitch or are pushed straight down into the playing surface um and every 20 mm they will Stitch fiber into the Surface by the time we're finished it's going to be about 114 million fibers in this surface um which makes up about 3% of the playing surface the interwoven mesh of deso grass locks the surface together those fibers are punched down so that gives them that anchoring ability so when the player's stud interfaces with the top of the fiber it doesn't pull out the combination of the two makes it a very strong playing surface and as such FIFA have qualified this as 100% natural playing surface 80 m above the turf a team is hanging precariously between the Dome and the movable roof creating one of the world's largest LED projection screens the ETF roof pillows will be illuminated by programmable LEDs so almost anything can be [Music] projected this is uh one example of what we've installed uh on the roof there are 6,000 of these tbas across the roof and each tbba consists of three pixels so we have something like 20,000 pixels on the entire [Music] roof the whole lighting sequence is synchronized from one single computer it's a fancy concert lighting type system let's see if the lights work lights on looks like we've got uh a couple of lights that are not switched on over here looks like we have a connection problem over here right uh it's fairly common for installation as large as this so we're looking forward to having our Singapore flag proudly displayed on the on the roof as construction finishes another team's about to learn if they've succeeded or failed after working through the night audio engineer Gary go is about to have his 18 months of work judged a success or failure marking Gary's scorecard is the toughest of all critics his father Ronald today will be the first time that we are turning on all the speakers at one time I think we've been waiting for this day for a while we run simulations and and all that but it's another thing to actually hear it for the first time the goal was to deliver the clarity of a concert hall with the punch of a rock concert to test the Acoustics Ronald will play an old favorite [Music] Bolero that track has a lot of good memories for me in fact when we did the first Stadium I tested Bolero too so this is what 300,000 wats of sound power sounds like you can feel it in your chest I feel like I'm in the concert hall and not in the stadium I'm proud of Gary and his team you know who who can make the sound who make the speakers the sound system sounds like this it it's it's awesome thank [Music] you opening day is fast approaching as The Sports Hub gets its finishing touches including a Remnant from the past there's a lot of sentimentality about the old kalang stadium because of the events that a lot of single parents shared there and so there was obviously no way to keep the entire Stadium but one part of the stadium was very cleverly sort of recycled in 2012 Singapore's Urban Redevelopment Authority commissioned designers to turn some of the old national stadiums wooden benches into 26 new benches placed around the city and there are so many ways we can make it go up and down it could it could go up and and up and up Colin Seer and Angie 's bench design was inspired by the old Stadium's beloved Kang wave the wave would happen spontaneously during soccer matches and it became such a phenomenon it's contagious it's something that um just spreads throughout the entire round of the stadium once it gets started so that's why the bench itself is an extremely long length 9 m in total so it starts off with this smaller wave and grows and grows until the largest it embodies so much of this Emotion and Joy that you get in April 2014 The kalang Wave went to its permanent home at the sports hub's new Singapore sports museum yeah I just wish that they would extend it and make the wave 200 M long and all around the stadium that would be fantastic [Applause] June the 28th 2014 after 3 years The Sports Hub is complete now it's time for the ultimate test of Singapore's New National Sports Complex opening its doors for the first time to the people it's been built to serve well we want to make the sports St accessible to all singaporeans it's a program for everyone we have Community basketball courts we have Community skate parks we've got lawn balls we've got beach volleyball courts and these are just for the community to have fun just [Music] play I think it's really cool that the shopping mall has a rock climbing wall like it becomes more convenient at the same time also and I can go climbing all the time is a very well finished all the facil are quite well class and we are enjoying our time here so far and The Sports Hub isn't just a hit with amateur athletes Pros like it too I've never seen a stadium like this in my life and you 55,000 fans can come down and support you'll be amazing it isn't long before amazing happens in August 2014 singaporeans flock by the thousands to the first football match in the National Stadium to see a Singaporean team take on Juventus Italian football's most successful Club Singapore football's favorite sun is predicting a big night I'm looking forward to to hear The Greatest kalang R ever we've been missing it for ages now fandy doesn't have to wait long even before the first goal there's no doubt how everyone's feeling in their new [Applause] home it's really an emotional moment for all of us to really experience what we have dreamed of 8 years ago as a team just come alive now this is the first time that everything has really come together with the event here uh today so the moving roof closed the seats brought forward into like this football configuration and seeing that today uh is a realization of a dream very exciting the stadium has passed its first big test with flying colors I'm very excited about the fact that the vision that we have set out in 2001 is not a reality The Sports Hub will be a game changer for the sporting scene in Singapore it will be a place where Champions are born where records are broken and it will be an iconic Landmark that the world will see and which all singaporeans can be proud of 40 years ago a great Stadium inaugurated a new nation's Sports history and sparked the careers of Singapore's first sporting [Music] Legends now a new era has begun with a Sports Hub that will place Singapore proudly among the world's great sporting Nations and will inspire new generations of singaporeans to search for their own Field of Dreams [Music] oh [Music]

Channel: Free Documentary

Views: 344,854

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), engineering, engineering documentary, constructions, construction documentary, megastructures, engineers at work, construction, technology, technology documentary, tech documentary, singapore, singapore architecture, singapore construction

Id: OsLb0ixqix8

Length: 46min 19sec (2779 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020