Das Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha in Brasília

Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha, Brasília.

The Brazilian capital, which just turned 50 years old, is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Where civil engineers will find bold and substantial reinforced concrete constructions, for architects Brasília is some kind of holy ground of modernity. For the architects of gmp and the engineers of schlaich bergermann und partner it was a great honor to be part of the team that could add another monumental building to the ensemble of Costa and Niemeyer. And this is how a new multi-functional stadium was built, in the tradition of Brasilia with its formal and tangible print and with the methods of today. Resulting from the history of the existing stadium, it was an important design requirement to expand the existing stadium bowl and to place all access functions as well as the new roof structure separately. This also gives an explanation of the design, although at the end and for many reasons a completely new stadium bowl was built. But it is precisely the interplay between ramps, bridges, columns and the powerful, perfectly circular roof, placed outside the stadium bowl, that makes the special charm of the building. The heavy ring rests on a variety of reinforced concrete columns giving the building its monumentality, while above floats anchored a lightweight roof par excellence.