The Atatürk Olympic Stadium seats 80,000 spectators, which makes it one of the world's largest Olympic stadia. The opening event featured a match between the teams of Galatasarray Istanbul and Olympiakos Athenes. Although the venue is intended mainly for athletics and football, it will also be used for concerts, where it’s capacity can climb to 100,000.
At a total cost of about USD140 million, the Atatürk Olympic Stadium is a state-of-the-art facility. Designed in the form of a crescent, the stadium's roof is a complex, huge steel structure with a total weight of 4,400 tons and a total size of 31,000 square metres. In addition to all the technical facilities designed and constructed in conformity with international construction, sports and security standards, the stadium also has a large trade and service centre located on six floors and with a total area of over 40,000 square metres.
The stadium has been constructed by the leading Turkish conglomerate Tekfen Construction and Campenon Bernard, SAE International of France, the architects of Stade de France. Similar audio performance criteria were set to those in the Stade, where a Nexo Alpha system has become a benchmark for stadium sound. Thirty-six Alpha E-M cabinets have been installed under the roofs of the West and East stands, with eight M3s, all controlled by a total of 18 NX241 digital controllers. Christian Laumet of sound contracting company S.N.E.F. of Marseilles explained that "the main problem we had to solve was the hanging of the clusters under the roofs, where they are fixed to the metallic frame through the low skin of the roof. This is 50 metres up in the air so we had some constraints in terms of aligning the cabinets, and making provision for getting the boxes down if they require maintenance or repair." Using 90kW of amplification, the audio specification demanded 102dB of sound throughout the stands, and the same intelligibility Rasti ratio as the Stade de France.
(Ruth Rossington)
