National Stadium

The Polish National Stadium was built for the European Cup, 2012. It was designed to be a multi-purpose stadium, and for music events, it can accommodate up to 72,900 people. A two-deck underground parking garage is integrated beneath the playing field, with almost 1,800 parking spaces; above the ground, the stadium consists of six storeys with a room capacity of around 1 million m³.

The geological conditions demanded that the building be constructed on 15,000 pillars and columns of vastly different kinds; The stadium itself is a reinforced concrete structure.

The National Stadium fulfils the requirements of the highest UEFA category (4); it offers 4,600 premium seats, 69 VIP boxes with 800 seats, 100 seats for the disabled and 900 seats for members of the press.

Four restaurants offer food for the fans; a premium restaurant, at an elevation of 40 meters, with a usable area of 1,300 m², provides a panorama view of the Weichsel River and the historic city centre of Warsaw. Fans can also get active – there is a gym, with a surface area of 2,500 m², directly on site.

Matches can be played, whatever the weather: the grass can be heated, and if necessary, the roof structure can be closed completely. It is made of fibreglass-reinforced woven fabric, with a teflon coating, which makes it resistant to rain and sunshine. Even an 18 cm layer of wet snow is no match for the roof.

The overall load of the building should be kept as low as possible, in order to keep distortion within limits, and in order to keep the support structure as light as possible. Therefore, for large sections of the slabs in the upper storeys, altogether about 152,000 m² of the entire floor area, Cobiax voided flat plate slabs were used, together with precast elements. (The semi precast elements further speed up the building process, because, by connecting the voided modules with the precast elements, the concrete screed can be thrown in a single working day.)

By using the Cobiax technology, the concrete consumption was reduced by 13,700 m³; which means a reduction in the building’s own weight by 342,500 kN. Besides the aesthetic, logistic and ecological advantages, this saving in terms of concrete and support components and structures also led to a reduction in the overall project costs for the National Stadium, in the area of reinforced concrete construction.