Located in front of the famous Parc des Princes, the 23,000 square metre Ductal Ultra High Performance Concrete (UHPC) skin of the Jean Baudoin Gymnasium, designed by renowned architect Rudy Ricciotti, is light, bright and transparent.
In this project, Ductal Ultra High Performance Concrete was used in three main areas:
Openwork facade: the application of self-supporting openwork panels on the facade ensures a bright and transparent light.
-Openwork panels at the junction between the façade and the roof: higher openness and larger curves.
-Roofing: 1,600 roofing panels with embedded glass
The architects’ requirements were clear: the hyperbolic mesh skin absorbs sound from the spectators and is waterproof, while the façade channels rainwater and filters light through the building grid.
The main structure of the building is a metal frame system consisting of 80 beams of different sections. The choice of Ductal Ultra High Performance Concrete Metal Fibers for the curtain wall was made at the beginning of the project design, due to:
- It has a compressive strength of up to 150-250 MPA.
- Its very high compactness makes it virtually impossible for environmentally harmful chemicals to penetrate the Ductal curtain wall panels.
This is why we used structural materials for the building skin. Of course, in terms of design form, the undulating surface of the stadium is also in harmony with its surroundings. The entire project is made up of 3600 long triangular panels, which are connected to the main frame by three fixed points.
The use of Ductal allows for a 50% openness of the openwork panels. The excellent mechanical properties of the material allow the lattice-like panels to act as railing protection in addition to decoration.
Innovative roofing applications
The architects required the roof to be waterproof. The roofing slab is 2.4 m wide and 9 m long, 35 mm thick, with 20-27% glass embedded in ultra-high performance concrete and two 16 cm thick ribs poured during the prefabrication of the slab.
Thanks to Ductal’s very high bending strength, the roofing slab can be designed so slim that it can be overhung by 8-9 meters.
Prior to prefabrication, the architects, together with the LafargeHolcim team and the prefabrication plant, undertook a comprehensive series of tests and evaluations, including laboratory and 1:1 proofing tests, 78,000 fatigue tests, temperature impact tests, 50 freeze-thaw cycles and waterproofing tests.
