30 grandstands for the largest inclusive sports festival
Thousands of athletes with intellectual and multiple disabilities, their support teams and fans took part in the world's largest inclusive sports event. Nüssli transformed Messe Berlin into a multi-sport facility for the event.
For the first time, the largest inclusion sports event in the world took place in Germany - as the biggest sports event since the 1972 Olympic Games. From June 17 to 25, the event in Berlin united people with and without intellectual disabilities in their enthusiasm for sports and shared experiences. More than 7000 athletes from over 190 countries competed in 26 Olympic summer sports and celebrated sporting highlights together. Nüssli realized the approximately 9000 required grandstand seats for this event.
From exhibition center to multi-sport facility
The event builder installed the grandstand seating in the form of 30 individual grandstands, which formed the appropriate spectator infrastructures for the various sports in eleven halls at Messe Berlin. They offered between 140 and 1450 spectator seats. "Our approach to the solution was to reduce the number of different grandstand layouts to a minimum without losing sight of the needs of the individual sports," explains Uli Born, Sales Manager at Nüssli. "By developing 'only' seven grandstand layouts, we managed to both meet the tight budget constraints and reduce planning and logistics efforts, simplify assembly and standardize processes."
Media transmissions all over the world
The competitions and highlights of the Special Olympics World Games were broadcast daily throughout the world. Accordingly, the infrastructure for the approximately 1500 media representatives on site was important. The Nüssli project team installed six camera towers, which required a special solution due to the hall floor. This is because the hall floor rests on a steel support grid and is caused to vibrate by strong audience movements. To ensure smooth images, these vibrations had to be prevented from being transmitted to the camera towers, which are up to seven meters high. For this reason, the towers were founded under the lifting floor on the concrete subsoil 45 centimeters below and precisely aligned.
Focus on efficiency and sustainability
It took only ten days to set up the infrastructure and six days to dismantle it. Careful coordination of the trades involved made it possible to work in the various halls overlapping in time and to minimize waiting times.
Logistics played a key role in terms of efficiency and sustainability. A large part of the 460 tons of system material was delivered by 27 semitrailer trucks from the Ludwigsfelde plant, which is only 24 kilometers away, thus ensuring a significantly lower carbon footprint for the construction site. On the extensive exhibition grounds, the material then reached the respective hall in an optimized manner - either directly from the truck or with suitable means of transport such as heavy-duty platform trailers. Time-consuming and environmentally harmful journeys with individual pallets could thus be minimized.
