BIM Design

POPULOUS

CURVILINEAR WORKFLOWS

AVIVA STADIUM

1 Populous, Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Ireland, 2005–10The Aviva Stadium, completed by Populous in 2010, is a football and rugby stadium in the Ballsbridge suburb of Dublin, Ireland, with a seating capacity of 51,700. Extensive shadow and solar simulations were undertaken to develop the stadium’s exterior geometry, which was prohibited from casting shadows on the nearby community of single-family houses.

Populous was newly founded in 2009 from the group known as HOK Sport, which existed between 2000 and 2009, originating with the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Previously, from the mid-1970s, the firm had its roots as Lobb Sports Architecture. The firm, under David Hines – an Associate who leads the firm’s parametric geometry group – has been using Rhinoceros^® intensively on their stadium projects since 2005, with the initiation of the Aviva Stadium design. Populous established in their practice three items considering computation with regard to sports facility design, which were all defined through the delivery of the Aviva Stadium. A 51,700 seat stadium in Dublin, Ireland, it measures approximately 180 metres (580’–0”) long and 140 metres (460’–0”) wide. The firm articulated these items in a recent article in AD:¹

1 The Aviva Stadium, which was the firm’s first significant project, used BIM extensively. The project employed an immersive parametric ...