With Acoustic Program and Audio/Video System design begun in 2013, WSDG Walters-Storyk Design Group Partner/General Manager Renato Cipriano was instrumental in the speech intelligibility for live video feeds from Rio’s seven Olympic Stadia.
Designed to generate benefits long after the 2016 Olympics is history, officials recognised the need for a significant audio/video and acoustics upgrade to enable the 51-year-old complex to comply with FIFA technical requirements.
Built in 1965, the 62,1601 seat Mineirão Stadium is Brazil’s second largest sports arena: ‘Our primary Mineirão concerns focused on the level of sound comfort and intelligibility in relation to RT60 reverberation time,’ Cipriano says. ‘Our simulation programs enabled us to assess and ‘auralise’ the entire complex. We identified extensive sound reflections throughout the arena, and concluded that acoustical absorption was required at the inner ring of the audience sector to achieve the required STI values. Speaker positioning was defined for the internal and external areas, and for numerous zoning maps, which can now be individually controlled for increased flexibility and security purposes. All audio and video systems, and control room speaker selections, were designed to meet FIFA, international security and, Olympics Committee standards. Additionally, we recommended incorporating a video wall instead of a traditional scoreboard.’
Significanrlt, WSDG brought extensive experience in multi-task collaboration to the project: ‘Our US and European teammates were invaluable assets in providing comprehensive technical, acoustic, aesthetic and technological designs for the Maracanã and Barra Park Olympic stadia, and for Belo Horizonte’s Mineirão and Independencia arenas,’ Cipriano says.
WSDG designed the Acoustic Program and Audio and Video Systems for the stadiums and all public areas – a total of 3,000,000-sq-ft. Mission specs encompassed acoustical treatments and a comprehensive sound system serving the soccer field, audience and VIP rooms, offices, internal spaces and access areas. Video systems included four large LED video walls (915-sq-ft) each, scoreboard screens, as well as time clock and media video displays throughout the complex. In addition, there were integrated audio and video control rooms, as well as acoustics, sound and video systems for the three tennis arenas and practice fields (10,000, 5,000 and 3,000 seats); the 18,000 seat Aquatic Arena and Warm-Up Pool; and, audio and video systems for the COT Arenas (16,000-seat basketball, 10,000-seat judo and 10,000-seat wrestling arenas).
WSDG Europe Partner/GM Dirk Noy reports that the team performed extensive acoustical simulations to insure optimal stadium speech intelligibility: ‘This is a three-step procedure. In step one, each individual space must be translated from architectural information (drawings and measured dimensions), into a three-dimensional digital model. In step two, the model is fitted with acoustical surfaces. Basically, every surface of the model (walls, floor, windows, ceiling, furniture, curtains, etc) needs to be assigned specific acoustical properties. In step three, we perform ‘virtual’ acoustical measurements in the model and apply those results to correct or modify any (absorptive or reflective) acoustical issue.’
Developed as Rio’s primary 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games competition centre, Barra Park will continue to serve as the city’s largest legacy sporting venue. Olympic Park includes nine sports venues. The Olympic Arena and Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre, were originally built for the Rio 2007 Pan American Games. The seven new stadia/sports venues are the Olympic Tennis Centre, Aquatics Stadium and Rio Olympic Velodrome; plus the COT Arenas – Olympic Hall 1 (basketball, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby), Olympic Hall 2 (Olympic and Paralympic judo, plus wrestling and boccia), Olympic Hall 3 (taekwondo, fencing and sitting volleyball) and, Olympic Hall 4 (handball and goalball).
Simultaneous to the extensive Mineirão assignment, WSDG coordinated extensive Audio and Video upgrades for Brazil’s largest sports venue, the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, which hosted 250 thousand fans for a KISS concert in 1983; And, for Independencia, a 25,000-seat arena built in Belo Horizonte in 1950. All three stadia had hosted events for the 2014 World Cup. Maracanã hosted the opening and closing events of the 2016 Olympics.
‘We are extremely pleased to have lent our expertise to these formidable Brazilian stadium projects,’ Renato Cipriano concludes. ‘The collective expertise of our European and US associates enabled us to provide precise testing, exacting presentation drawings and meticulous system integration programmes in an extremely efficient, and cost-effective manner. We were honored to have participated in this extraordinary Olympic adventure.’
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