U
NIVERSITÀ DIP
ISAF
ACOLTÀ DII
NGEGNERIACorso di Laurea Specialistica in Ingegneria Edile e delle Costruzioni Civili
T
ESI DIL
AUREARelatori:
Prof. Ing. Giampaolo Munafò
Anno accademico 2015/2016
Candidato: Ottavio Melpignano
Index
Introduction ... 1
The Roots ... 4
1.1 A familiar environment ... 4
1.2 How it has been made ... 9
1.3 The best choice ... 14
The Overture ... 22
2.1 Location ... 22
2.2 Appearance ... 28
2.3 Function planning ... 37
2.4 Spaces ... 39
The Core ... 50
3.1 Shape ... 50
3.2 Audience ... 58
3.3 Stage ... 62
3.4 Links ... 64
3.5 Surfaces ... 66
3.6 Displays ... 68
3.7 Windows ... 73
3.8 Acoustics ... 75
The Lights ... 77
4.1 Arena lighting ... 90
4.1.1 Artificial lighting (show) ... 91
4.1.2 Artificial lighting (maintenance) ... 103
4.1.3 Daylight ... 124
4.1.4 Arena LENI ... 142
4.2 Open Space lighting ... 145
4.2 Artificial lighting... 146
4.2 Open Space LENI ... 154
The Conclusions... 158
Drafting Attachments ... 159
References ... 177
Site list ... 179
1
Introduction
The electronic evolution of competition
It’s not so hard to understand that as time passes, people habits, as well their culture, change as the technology improves, and this is the case of sport’s players performance, indeed, the Sport itself is also affected by these changes no matter what the players are interacting with. But there is something that remain unscathed by the technological progress, and that is the entertainment element that lives inside the sport definition.
We can verify that every performance requiring an effort has the potentiality of being watched by an audience, so, might it be the kick of a ball or the shooting of an arrow, any action requiring a particular skill in its respective discipline is susceptible of having both a dedicated place and a following audience.
And here comes the part where the ball or the arrow turns into a joystick or a keyboard and a mouse, where the competition means become electronic devices and the sport becomes an electronic-sport, or e-sport for short.
So we can now easily understand the duality between a sportsman and a “Gamer” (a person who does have skills in a certain videogame) as well as between the sport and the “Electronic-sport”. Be known that, where many gamers face each other competing for a title in a specific videogame while surrounded by an audience, the place will be considered an E-sports Arena, and its setup will be based on a specific videogame tournament or many of them performed in the same place but at different times and dates.
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Although many events of this kind were planned all around the world until now, and with a very high ratio of people involved (45.000 spectators in year 2014 within the Samsung arena, Seoul), they don’t actually have a designed space on purpose. Every single event was planned and placed in arenas already made for other sport purposes, and only 2 e-sport arenas, one in the U.K. and one in the U.S. were designed appositely in 2015.
Getting to the point where we want to watch it in a technical way, despite the fact they are now hosted in places like indoor sport arenas, doesn’t mean the quality of spectating or performing space is ensured. Making it simple, adapting the e-sport setup to a space designed for generic sport purposes is simply not enough for us to say it doesn’t need a dedicated building type.
Purpose
We are going to consider the core functional aspects and spatial parameters of a so called e-sport arena and work out a building Type specific for these instances.
In other words, this is a design that wants to be a starting point from which other projects of the same type can be made, whether the expectation is having a big flow of audience or a smaller one.
This thesis is written in English as well as being subject of proposal to the Turtle Entertainment GmbH Company, Located at Siegburger Str. 189 50679 Cologne, Germany; by email to the managers Ralf Reichert, Heinrich Zetlmayer, for evaluation regarding relevance and quality of the subject.
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Chapter 1 – The Roots
Getting started with the study of a new type involving the entertainment theme, we obviously want to look at a few examples first. So what we are going to do now is considering a few key place where the main focus is “looking inward” and below is explained why.
Despite the fact e-sport arenas setups are usually similar to cinema ones (thus a mono directional focus type), we want to make a connection between the sport concept we already know and the new upcoming e-sport. This can be done by choosing the type of space configuration used until now for sport like events. We find that this decision also fits better with the word arena itself, so we now enter the context where a show is performed in the center of an area surrounded by an audience accordingly, by showing a few key examples made throughout the history.
1.1 A familiar environment
The Olympia Stadium
The first stadium therefore originated in the VIII Century BC around a rudimentary athletics track shaped as an elongated "U". Starting and finish line were at the two ends and there was one only 192 m long and 32 m wide track. A stone stand with two separate entrances for judges and for spectators, who could therefore watch the athletes' efforts and cheer them throughout
the competition, was built along the track. The also elongated-U-shaped stand ran along the three sides of the track, two rectilinear and one bended, on the other side opening onto the surrounding landscape. Olympia stadium, which was extended as the Games became popular in the whole ancient Greece, could welcome up to 45,000 spectators.
5 From an architectural viewpoint, with its partially open structure and its plan, shaped as an elongated "U", the stadium, which is built sometimes by excavating tiers along a slope and other times by building them at a certain height on a level ground, is the meeting point between the two great typological models of the Greek and Roman world, which are also public facilities used for performances: theatre (which we are not going to consider in this case because of their one directional audience focus) and amphitheater, But we can definitely say this is one of the first central space for performances surrounded by an audience.
The Coliseum
This might be the most representative example of “looking inward” arena, maybe one of the firsts of its genre. Well known as the Flavian amphitheater, the Colosseum could hold, it is estimated, an average audience of 65,000; it was used for gladiatorial contests and public spectacles such as mock sea battles, animal hunts, executions, re-enactments of famous battles, and dramas based on Classical mythology. Although we can’t even properly refer to a sport in this case, we are however talking about a show that included clashes between one or more individual that was susceptible of being supervised.
Figure 1.1-3. Perspective of the Coliseum Figure 1.1-2. Planimetry and section
6 In this scenario, the audience envelopes the space where the show is performed, ordered in circles where the priority to have a better view (thus a closer look, seating in the inner sectors) was assigned to higher classes and hierarchy roles. The scene is placed at the center while the other functional spaces are located beneath the lofts. As time passes the new construction of places of performance like this remain frozen until the invention of Sport became popular and followed by many.
Piazza Santa Croce
Sports practice was given a new boost during the Renaissance, however they did not take place in specific facilities because as just said, public spaces in which performances were made stopped to exist until this period, so they were arranged usually in areas serving other purposes, in large open spaces or in the squares, which were often provided with wooden tiers and small temporary roofs for the most important spectators. In Piazza Santa Croce the forerunners of modern football used to play in teams made up of 27 members each without any rule, but with the same stadium set we know nowadays, making it another good example of place of sport with central focus typology.
Figure 1.1-4. Coliseum plan
7 Stade de france
Jumping a little quicker into modern days, with the event of commercial arenas with embedded normative and pertinence spaces, multi-functional stadia arose, including many of audible performance aspects and not only the main sportive events such as concerts and others manifestations. This building can count up to an 80,000 all-seater capacity stadium with every seat in the facility being covered. This was one of the first stadia made for a specific purpose (football game) that revealed itself to be a great space for other activity types. In the figures we can see four setups (a concert, a soccer game, the Olympics and even a car race one) for the arena although the stadium remains the same.
And here comes the part when we can talk about the essence of a performance being right in the middle of the audience attention, is it actually a sport? Is it none?
Bc One
Implying the fact we ensured that the main focus of this chapter is not about the structure itself containing the show but the way the show demands a structure around it, we can conclude our examples by illustrating one in which the central space controls the adjacent audience. It is the case of the bc one event, where set of dancers are in the middle of a circle that is the main focus of the setup.
Figure 1.1-6. Soccer stadium setup Figure 1.1-7. Olypmics setup
Figure 1.1-9. BC One arena perspective Figure 1.1-8. Concert setup
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One more time the central space in all this centuries has been ensured to be the bulwark of every sport like event, and our electronic performance is not less relevant to the case, so the choosing of a central space rather than a single directional one turns out to be the most coherent for our typological setup.
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1.2 How it has been made
Now that we have established the best solution for the spatial configuration type, we face what was made until now and observe what kind of setup better fits the definition of arena we want to give the project just as mentioned in the previous paragraph. But before we jump straight into
examples, let’s recognize what elements characterize the main space the arena is made of so we can locate them in every single event we consider and compare them to our wanted spatial configuration. Let’s take a look at figure 1.2-1; This is basically a typical e-sports arena setup, or better, as the main room hosting the event is being set up. As we can see, we can point out there are three main features forming this place. The first, is the big screen, that displays what the players are doing in an overall perspective. The second is the players, that are directly below the big screen or in a place just next to it. The third is naturally the audience following what’s happening
on the scene which is composed by the first two elements we described just yet. So we can summarize the entire environment in two different spaces: The stage and the auditorium (fig.1.2-2), which are the function tied spatial areas we need to locate in the next example events.
Figure 1.2-1. E-sport arena’s typical setup
10 Let’s start with the smallest one of
the events we are about to consider. The Copper Box Arena is well known to be a sport hosting volume and as we can see, it has been adapted to be an e-sport arena. According to the space available, they built a two-way scene which communicates singularly with each one of the tribunes surrounding the central field. One, the longest side of the rectangle, for team competitions and the other, disposed on the shortest side, for one-on-one competitions.
This means the total number of spectator for each type of competition is fixed, but what we can really point out so far is that in this case only half of the total space available was actually put in use. Opposite to this we have the fact that due to this decision the field of view for each individual person becomes very close, therefore improving the quality of the setup for the audience.
Figure 1.2-3. Copper box arena view
11 Similar to the previous example,
this arena is almost dedicated to various sport matches, but due to its size, the space is also used for other type of performances such as concerts, so it is by all means a multifunctional arena. The arrangement prepared for this event is similar to a concert one except for the tribunes behind the scene that are actually left off cause of the fact you can’t view a big screen from behind.
Talking about big screens, this time we have three of them, one put right behind the players on the scene and two, placed in a mirroring way one to another, above the middle point of the arena and tilted by a certain angle. This is for letting the most far away spectators from the scene to be able to view the show, but then at this point a new problem arises, while in the previous arena the use of the space was halved, is in this case the quality in specific places of the audience differing too much from another certain seating? For now let’s just proceed to another event.
Figure 1.2-5. KeyArena view
12 Even more bigger, this stadium is
also a multifunctional one. Similar setup as we already seen, resulting in unused tribunes behind the displays and directly to its side. The different thing here is the scene extending itself into the center, although it was not used for what concerns players, in fact it was actually used for music entertainment and proclamation at the end of the tournament.
We can also see that in this case we don’t even have additional screens for far away audience, it is all about the big size of the one above the place the players are located at. This results in bad view position in the far side of the arena, forcing the spectator to lean constantly during the show.
Figure 1.2-8. Staples centre configuration Figure 1.2-7. Staples centre view
13 Due to the multiple type of games
players were playing, a more intelligent use of the arena here is put to use, we can witness this with the encounter of a substantially different type of space setup. The scene has now two opposite sides, one involving the most of the arena and one only the terminal portion of the tribunes. This according to the fan base that can be major for a game and less big for another even if they are part of the same event.
Not only this difference comes to the eye, but also that the central s pace (of the bigger side) is now almost left blank, leaving place to multi-sided screens above the area, resulting in the viewing comfort of the spectators seating on the side. But despite the double scene, still some seating lofts are unable to be used. This is imposed by the angle of view of the big screen, that cannot have audience directly next to its side as we already found in the other
smaller setups. Figure 1.2-10. SAP centre configuration Figure 1.2-9.. SAP centre view
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1.3 The best choice
We have seen that for every setup that involved the using of an already made for general multifunction sport arena, a specific problem was detected. So the making use of an arena made the way it is now conceived, is probably not what we want into the design of an e-sport arena, and this is one of the many important reasons that takes us into dedicating a fresh new type for the cause. So, now we know that adapting to the current meta stages is not worth the space nor the quality of the view, we must figure out a space configuration made on purpose, meaning that we have to strategically surround the main element, the stage, in order to get a 100% usage of the space available for audience, therefore leaving no unused seating or empty volumes with no functionality at all.
We come down then to a set of solutions, that are displayed in figure 1.3-1. In which we can maybe point out that the double sided disposal is better fitting the solution we want, because this arrangement satisfies pretty much the need of maxing the audience while keeping the quality of the spectators’ field of view, But space configuration of the arena is not the only thing we have to put an eye on.
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If that was the case, all we have got to do is simply remodel and resize a sport arena the way is conceived now and then the work will be simply finished, but since the e-sports environment is not only about the performance show, we cannot ignore all the other functions that comes with the topic that need to be put together in order to connote our purview. So, what is brought to table is a place where people experiences sport in a different manner, for example, a soccer team goes to a stadium for training and practising scrims, but where an e-sports team does go to?
Paragons are not the only way to express it, because there are new features that
This is pretty much why we need to create a fresh new building typology: although the sport theme is in common for sure, the whole e-sport set simply doesn’t fit the way the current sport is lived.
Another question may come into play at this point, how big is this trend growing to have such an impact and make us thinking of designing a whole new space type?
Coming down to numbers, we just have to look at the impact this industry had in a time frame that will at the end, bring us into saying the best choice is to make a building typology on purpose.
We read and hear a lot about the massive growth of the esports industry. When it comes to prize money and viewership, this industry can easily compete with its siblings from traditional mass media entertainment like sports. We sometimes miss the opportunity to actually take a look at this growth and classify what we are dealing with.
Here are five charts which give some context into esports’ growth since 2010. All data comes from E-sports Earnings, an organization that does its best to track prize pools across the industry. Let’s take a look at the growth and value of the esports industry within the last five years.
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Some of the most impressive growth can be found in analyzing the total prize money across the years. In 2010, esports tournaments gave away a total of $5,499,872 (Fig. 1.3-2). The top tier games back then were Counter-Strike, Halo 3, StarCraft 2, StarCraft: Brood War and WarCraft 3. Barely five years later, this number multiplied by eight to $45,542,556. Keeping in mind that many big tournaments are still ahead of us this year, and it’s safe to say that the total prizes for 2015 will exceed $50 million.
The top tier games have changed, too. This year,Dota 2, League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Smite and StarCraft 2form the Top 5 Games in terms of prize money.
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In the last five years, players not only competed for higher prizes, but also more frequently. The industry has seen the number of events triple over the last 5 years (Fig. 1.3-3). Lately, we have witnessed the dark side of this trend, too. The “Gaming Paradise” event turned into a disaster as the organizer failed on paying equipment, venue and hotel expenses, leaving attending players in trouble with authorities and the community in disbelief. Luckily, the tournament, which will find its way into the esports history books as one of the worst CS:GO events ever, is not representative of the industry—most events are well-executed and, more importantly, well-funded.
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More tournaments and higher prize money in total don’t guarantee that there is progression in terms of growth. Looking at the average tournament prize pool within the last five years, however, does show a significant increase compared to the above numbers (Fig. 1.3-4). After all, the average prizes have more than doubled. For the sake of clarity: this year’sDota 2 “The International” with a $18 million mega-prize is a runaway value, which certainly bends the numbers for 2015. Still, it is a clear trend towards rising average prize pools, also verified by the next section, which shows the average earnings of players (Fig. 1.3-5).
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Unlike every other chart shown so far, this diagram does not show exponential growth. While average earnings have grown from approximately $2,000 five years ago to $5,200 today, the bar graph stayed almost flat between 2011 to 2012 and, after some increase in the meantime, even shrunk from 2014 to 2015. Of course, there are still tournaments to play in 2015. With still coming events like League of Legends World Championship, DreamHack and ESL One New York, the bars will surely equalize till the end of the year. Nonetheless, this chart shows a problematic tendency in the esports industry. The average player earnings are not mirrored by the industry’s growth in total. To be fair: the money earned in tournaments are not identical with the total salary of a player. Players also get paid by the organization they represent, paid by individual sponsorships, and earn revenue from live-streaming. Tournament money is regarded as a bonus in most cases. On the other hand, tournaments are what attracts most fans. This is especially true for those game titles where a regular season does not exist and teams head from tournament to tournament, such as Dota 2. And there is another trend adding to the average earnings per player discussion: the number of total active players has blown up (Fig. 1.3-6).
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The awareness the esports industry has received in the last five years has been tremendous. Esports have attracted major brands to get into sponsorships, and have filled sport stadiums with huge crowds of fans. It also created stardom for dozens of gamers, and motivated thousands of ordinary gamers and amateurs to “go pro.” E-sports Earnings counted some 786 players total in 2010. For comparison: the German soccer league, Bundesliga, numbers only around 500 players every season.
In just five years, esports’ active pro player numbers have grown rapidly. In 2015, almost 9,000 players were counted by E-sports Earnings. The increase of active players counted is not only justified by the popularity of esports, but also by the shift towards more team-oriented genres like MOBAs (League of Legends, Dota 2) instead of 1v1 titles (StarCraft, WarCraft).
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Chapter 2 – The Overture
Designing an E-Sports arena isn’t just about putting one big stadium down where the show is consumed and everyone is there just for this. E-Sporting is something that involves the audience more than a traditional sport does, not only because video gaming requires a lot lesser space for the practice to be done, but also because most of the people coming to see these events are practicing the game themselves, implying they also need a common space for practice. Showcasing is also a part that has become more important as the competitive scene becomes more popular amongst the spectators.
Summarizing all of this leads us into designing a place for players, gaming houses, hosts and guests to enjoy throughout the day within the gamers community.
2.1 Location
This city has been the host for nearly 60% of videogames related events in Europe, therefore making a great spot to start from. The most popular have been the following:
o ESL One
o EU LoL Championship Series o Intel extreme masters
o Gamescom o Clash of realities o Notgames fest
o Games Developer Conference Europe o RESPAWN gathering of game developers o Role Play convention
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Dimension – 357 168 km2
Population – 82 562 000
Density – 228 ppl/km
Dimension – 34 084 km2
Population – 17 571 856
Density – 515.48 ppl/km
Dimension – 357 168 km2
Population – 1 057 327
Density – 2 609 ppl/km
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Another good reason to choose Cologne is that it features the foundation of ESL.
The Electronic Sports League (ESL, formerly ESPL) is an e-Sports league, which is operated by Turtle Entertainment in Cologne,Germany. Today it has more than 6.100.000 registered members and consists of over 1,000,000 teams, which have played over 12.1 million games in addition to leagues, tournaments and VERSUS, the ESL's own online matchmaking. The ESL supports over 50 games in different genres through various national and international leagues. Games are usually broadcast via Twitch.tv, or played publicly at conventions such as Gamescom or CeBIT. ESL also operates the Intel Extreme Masters world championships.
And the way the E-Sport phenomenon rides high in Cologne is well showed by the fact it has also opened a new type of bar that includes a videogame related space for tournament and lesser non-sponsored events :
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German Sport University Cologne (German: Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln, DSHS) is the largest sports university in Europe with more than 5,000 students. The DSHS, in Cologne called SpoHo, is located in the Cologne district Müngersdorf, adjacent to the facilities of the major sports in Cologne, such as the RheinEnergieStadion.
It was founded in 1947 and, thus, continued the academic tradition of physical education in Germany established by Berlin’s “Deutsche Hochschule für Leibesübungen“ (German University for physical exercise) which had been inaugurated in 1920.
After the Sport University had changed its name to “German Sport University” in 1965 it gained the official status as a University in 1970. From now on, it had the right to award Ph.D.s (doctor of sport sciences) as well as the postdoctoral lecture qualification (Habilitation). After German reunification, the East German “Deutsche Hochschule für Körperkultur” (German University for “body culture”) Leipzig was dissolved, leaving the Sport University Cologne as the only one of its kind in Germany.
The University consists of the following academic studies:
o Teacher (primary and secondary schools, grammar schools and comprehensive schools, vocational colleges, special education, and only specialist sports, other subjects at theUniversity of Cologne):
o Bachelor of Arts in Sport Management and Sport Communication o Bachelor of Arts in Sport, Health and Prevention
o Bachelor of Arts in Sport, Outdoor Education and Movement o Bachelor of Arts
o Bachelor of Science in Sport and Performance o Master of Science in Sport Management
o Master of Arts in Sport, Media, and Communication Research o Master of Arts in Physical Activity and Sport for Seniors o Master of Arts in Rehabilitation and Health Management o Master of Arts Sport Tourism and Recreation Management o Master of Science in Exercise Sciences and Coaching o Master of Science in Sport Technology
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So as we can easily understand, this is the perfect place for a new era of sport to start from. In addition, we can relate the practicing of e-sports to the Science in Sport Technology, Sport Management and Arts in Sport. Not mentioning how the e-sports needs complementary places where to do physical exercises as well, combining all the elements we just saw in a unique perfect place to raise our structure.
The site chosen is a 100x170 (m) long unused area, standing next to the main campus avenue. The access to the site is suited to all kind of transport means, from the bicycle to the railway and the area chosen has 2 open sides facing the campus streets, and two facing a tree lined walkway street. The fact this area is dedicated to stadiums or similar, makes it easy to cover a large portion of this place, leaving no constraints on the design of the volume shape.
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2.2 Appearance
Is common practice in architecture to follow a specific set of steps dictated from various famous city planners as Kevin Lynch, in which we can detect various peculiarity that sets the basis for a shape forming, starting from the analysis of the architectural environment that surrounds the construction site or district. This though could be not the case, because this kind of approach implies that we must follow a specific artistic and history related shaping of the location we build in, and compounding this to a fresh new type of building can be overwhelming. What we can do though, is taking elements of existing contemporary and modern architecture and make use of them to link our new building to the Cologne contemporary architectural environment. Beside that though, we have to give our creation a training unit related to the matter the building function, and that is the pixel.
The pixel is what interfaces every function that has to do with electronic matters, so nothing is more appropriate than the pixel as the style forming for this project.
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Many are the elements that pushes us into designing a plan shaped this way.
The first, is the square module we defined that comes with the choice of the
geometry. In the second place, we combined the six faces of a cube rolled out
onto the ground. Last but not least, the plan resembles an S shape made of
square pixels, that fits totally with the theme the building has to offer.
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Volume parallelepiped geometry comes directly from an Einstein’s wise
quote: "Do things as simple as possible, but not any simpler". In addition to
this, it meets very nicely the concept we started from and in addition to that,
most recent contemporary buildings in Cologne already have in their urban
environment the simple extrusions we chosen to design our volume.
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Cladding are the like the business card of a building, they impress you before
you even get to know the content of a volume and this case, is no different.
We choose to envelope our volume with cladding representing the personality
of our structure by choosing a pattern that reminds a grid of pixels.
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The curtain wall is a great double sided tool to achieve both beauty to the
appearance and daylight to the inner spaces. It lightens the structure visual
and incites the outsider curiosity by adding the possibility to peek into the
building from the outside. Therefore we fill entire sides with these facades.
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2.3 Functions Planning
Before starting to show how the modeling of the spaces inside the shell was done, we have to explain how these spaces were planned accordingly to the functions expected.
First off, an e-sport arena is not only a place where to watch singles and stand-alone shows in a manner the current arenas for sport are conceived. When an e-sport event is organized, usually it brings together a whole showcase based on the game played. This is substantially for the entertainment purpose and not least, the marketing part that comes with it. Knowing that, the two functions of showcasing and competition are likely to need two separate areas, but arranged in a manner they are directly linked, so the visitors can easily access one or the other by simply crossing a door. A comparison to this can be a theater and its foyer, where people switch from the public relations part to the show in a continuous manner although the two function are divided. So this makes it good for planning an open space next to the arena. The arena has been decided to have a square shape, so it comes easy to give it an entire 30x30 module in the structure but the open space needs to be thought a bit more accurately. The open space must be the area where people can freely access to stands placed all around, lesser competition events, tryouts, and all the possible setups made when a general exhibition is having place. This means not only the 580 individuals the arena module can contain must be let free to roam, but also other people working and visitors that are not meant to follow the show. Having in mind that, we then let this multifunction space have two modules resulting in a space that is bigger twice than the arena, making it suitable for any number of visitors that is not simply restricted to the show.
Subsequently, comes the space communicating with the exhibition, which has to host a common volume where people jump in and out the open space area. This is the room that communicates directly with the entrance so it has to be an interchange lobby equipped with bathrooms and a little comfort zone to have a seat. Being this an intermediate point between entrance and the open space, it has to be planned in a manner it has two distinguished paths for the income and the outcome of visitors, implying we can incorporate a store, which function is not less important in an environment where lot of the content can be susceptible of purchasing.
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So these three functions, the store, the lobby and the entrance share the fact they are constantly populated and have the in-out paths in common. So what we do is binding all these spaces in one module and set a well-planned partition so the path of outgoing is a forced to pass through the store, resolving the integration problem of the store being an independent place for restricted (ticketed) visitors.
Being this a place where people are used to remain for long periods of time during the day, we have to include a place where people can also have to possibility to have a break with a meal. Not much to say this function has to be located right in range of the free roaming space we planned before, but put apart from other functions.
At this point we have explained all the public functions part of the building, leaving to illustrate the private part. The level of management in a structure big like this one, can be difficult to determine, so starting from the fact that from the coordination of an exhibition to the organization in the creation of specific competitive show can be prominent, we have to give the offices function an entire module to make this area big enough to contain all the equipment, rooms and personnel needed for the purpose. We can easily find that in a module like this we can arrange from the open office to the reception without any difficulties. The only thing we must keep an eye on is the entrance to this part of the building, which has the need to be separated from the public area for two particular reasons. The first is that being separated from largely crowded areas it avoids the loudness the crowd brings that sometimes can be very difficult to manage, the second is the fact we need another entrance for figures that are intended to be to the sportsmen or the hosts. We can strengthen this concept by referencing to the actors’ entrance the theaters have.
Beyond this, we can then start to talk about the backstage area, which is an important part of the show environment that is strictly tied to the arena function where the performance is done. We must give this area a good relevance because its purpose is to host all the figures that orbit around the e-sport organization before while and after the event is taking place. Of course this place has to be directly connected with the arena itself so the hosts can switch between the stage and the backstage as fast and easily as possible. Last but not least, the technical rooms’ area is to be included as well, as we have to do with a high count of technologic equipment that has to be controlled from afar, and this comes in help of locating this area right where we can find the private side of the building among the other private functions we just listed.
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2.4 Spaces
We are now about to see our creation by the point of view of the function tied spaces present in the entire building. For a better view of this, we can draw an organization chart that shows how the various room are connected together and how they communicate through the public and private paths. Every circle represents a room and its radius is proportional to the room size, letting us intuitively know how the overall is bound.
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Entering the cubE-Sports, can be double sided, one occurs as a customer, and the other as a private. The two are opposed to each other and naturally, the customers’ entrance is the one who has the spotlight. It is located next to the main street of Cologne sport’s high school district and opens up introducing the first volume module. Preceded by a large paved area, the entrance hall is a 12x7 (m) sized room, in which there is the reception assigned to filtering, info point and ticketing for customers. As this room’s only function is to permit the flow of incoming and out coming people, it is immediately connected to the lobby.
The lobby is also in the first volume module and is the space where the people is fully welcomed to the inner e-sports arena environment, counting a large free space dedicated for stands and applied art installations to be the first impact the visitors have. Its height is about 5 (m) and in this case can be compared to a foyer, here is where the people flows in and out, equipped of public bathrooms and the exit through the store, which will be mentioned later on. The focus point of this space is to be the mean by which people can go to the open space that is one of the characterizing spaces an e-sports arena must have.
As we venture further into the building, we step into one of the two most important customers’ entertainment area: the open space. As two volume modules are being used for this area for the purpose, in the open space, as the name suggests, is set up anything that has to do from lesser gaming tournaments to exhibitions of any related electronic entertainment. Is not to be confused with a normal multifunctional area because of its vastly expanded plan that is nearly 60x30 (m), confined within a height of 5 (m) that makes this volume, shaped like a “shoes box”, not suitable for vertically nor overlying arranged audience. The functions assigned to this area are limited to exhibition, showcase, non-official tournament and social entertainment only that makes the true point of the place.
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Included in one volume module, the offices are the invisible training unit of any of the events organized into the construction, they are enveloped in a volume unit and have a private entrance for workers and players. This module is the one that is hidden the most cause of its nearness with the backstreet, making it the most quiet one as well as desirable for workers to stay. The entrance has a traditional reception next to a corridor that leads to the various workplace such as 4.1x4.5 (m) private offices, a 9.3x8.2 (m) conference room, and a 16 desk cabin workplace in a 268m2 open office room lightened with plenty of daylight coming from the curtain wall facing east. Next to the open office area there is the break room as well, also in direct communication with the outside thanks to the curtain wall embracing all the module containing the offices area.
Unlike the traditional sport places here there are no locker rooms for sportsmen, in replace, there are dressing rooms combined with briefing rooms. The first, the dressing rooms, might be deceiving because at a first glance no one seems to be needing clothes change in an e-sport environment. Instead, there is the need to change costumes, such as sponsor clothes and gadgets, plus the needing of an additional make up work because of the show part the e-sport brings with it. So basically in this module we have a set of 9 sub sequential dressing rooms 3.8x3.8 (m) for any guest or staff that needs to interface publicly (such as players, casters and interviewers), with an insertion of a common make up room for all the figures involved in the scene. In this module we also have bathrooms and 2 briefing rooms 9.8x6 (m), used by offices or teams while running a competition.
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The core of the cubE-Sports, the arena, is worth a volume module to occupy and not only in plan, but as we mentioned before it must contain the very meaning of a sport’s arena, and that is translated to a single high volume, comprehending 3 stories, reaching the highest of the heights of the structure that is 15 (m). The reason this room is this high is that the auditorium overlays 2 (m) higher than the scene, resembling a classic stadium like is usually built. The players/staff entrance is opposite this because this module is in the middle of the public/private zones of the structure making this the meeting point of the two parts. The room includes a balcony where casters are commenting from inside the technical room module, making this easy to manage technical facilities. The raised auditorium puts also a good use for inserting a safety path to the outside with a tunnel beneath the seating. This room is also compartmented accordingly to its medium to high fire hazard.
In this area we have what sustains the technical part for the arena. Audio-video processing is made in 3 separate rooms averaging 90m each, having a private bathrooms. The rooms are compartmented with REI120 materials and spaced as well as detached from the curtain wall surrounding the entire module; this for fire comprehensive safety reasons.
As many educational buildings these times have, the including of an inner detail store within the construction is nothing that trespass the line. What we need though is integrate the store in a manner it is always in a good spot to reach clients. So it is placed within the entrance unit just before the exit, making an unavoidable path that let you just peek into the store at least one time once you get in the lobby or other public areas.
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The restaurant is just above the open space area, making this connection very useful for people to jump in and out the exhibition space without having to travel long distances or having to leave the building for this reason. The plan covers an entire module, although the bar is not pretending to be one of the biggest we can see in crowded context.
Tables are arranged in the center of the space available and the restaurant elements are built inner in the square shape so customers can enter the restaurant or leave it to both sides, making it adequate for safety purposes.
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Chapter 3 – The Core
The room hosting the arena, The Core, is the heart of our entire design, meaning that despite the fact the building has other areas where something happens, the major function resides here where the show takes place, so a more precise study is needed for this area.
We need to know more accurately how it is made and what were the choices that led us to the design of every element composing this room, So let’s proceed with this kind of analysis.
3.1 Shape
As already mentioned before, we must design a convenient plan shape in order to give benefits to the room’s usage, and we will see now what better satisfies our needing. Starting from the plan, we have already seen that we could choose from a defined set of central space setups and that the better choice was the double sided disposal of the audience around the stage, and soon we can understand why.
Let’s analyze a little bit the screen element: it’s a flat surface that develops in width more than it does in height, so this tells us we must prefer a longitudinal disposing of the audience in front of it. In addition to that, we must ensure the audience benefits of a good field of view, suggesting us to make the last line of seating closer to the screen and thus promoting a rectangle shape auditorium.
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We also have the fact the image coming from the screen spreads along a conic path, but this doesn’t comes in handy because if we are developing our room longitudinally, we can’t just demand one screen element to cover the entire view space, because this leaves blind spots to the sides, and that’s why this is easily resolved by doubling the screen element making it a twin symmetrical setup.
Now that we have two really good reasons to start forming our room plan, we face the fact that in a plan made this way, the number of seating is drastically lowered but, if we mirror the solution by the screen longitudinal axis, we regain the loss we had when we preferred the nearing of the seating bulk.
This comes not only in favor of the setup parameters we designed just yet, but also occupies the entire square shaped plan module we discussed in the previous chapter, leaving us with it the best choice possible for an arena of this kind.
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Covering the plan surface is strictly tied to the function the room has, and dealing with high overcrowding rooms, we chose the floor to be composed by vinyl tiles that area easy to install and replace. The tiles selected for the purpose are the Armstrong 30x30 (cm) Vinyl Tiles, with a wooden finishing so they can better match the rest of the wooden surrounding elements such as the planks used for the acoustic insulation, the lamellar beams and the ceiling.
o Category: Floors
o Flooring Type: Vinyl Tile Flooring o Composition: Rotogravure o Wear Layer: Vinyl No-Wax o Gloss Level: Low Gloss o Width x Height: 30 x 30 (cm)
Vinyl is not a natural substance but is a synthetic man-made material. It is a type of plastic that is made from ethylene (found in crude oil) and chlorine (found in regular salt). When processed, both the substances are combined to form Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) resin, or as is commonly referred to, Vinyl.
Vinyl was first invented in 1920 by scientists who wanted to develop a material that would help to manufacture everyday products that were easier to make, more durable, and cheaper than what was available. Today, Vinyl has become the second largest manufactured and sold plastic resin in the entire world.
The most common use of vinyl is that in construction, especially as vinyl flooring and vinyl siding. In fact, these uses of vinyl are often thought of as its only uses. In addition to these, vinyl has many other uses because of its ability to combine with various additives and modifiers, thus making vinyl highly suitable to be used in the manufacture of many different products.
53 Common Properties Of Vinyl:
Vinyl is resistant to moisture and humidity. It is a very strong and durable plastic material. Vinyl can be manufactured in a variety of colors, both transparent and solid.
Vinyl is a very low cost material to produce.
Vinyl is a plastic material, which unlike other plastics, can easily be recycled. Because of the durability of vinyl, products made from this material have a long life span.
Add to this the fact that the vinyl can then be recycled, translates into an even longer life of the vinyl plastic resin.
Vinyl is a very environment friendly material, not only because it can be recycled, but also for many other reasons.
Vinyl helps in the preservation of environmental resources as 57% of vinyl is made from common salt, which is a renewable natural substance.
Non-replenish able resources such as crude oil only account for 43% of vinyl resin, thus making it nature friendly.
In comparison to various other materials used by the packing industry, vinyl requires lesser amounts of natural resources to make, utilizes much lesser energy for manufacture, and also releases lower emissions into the environment.
Rotogravure (roto or gravure for short) is a type of intaglio printing process, which involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. In gravure printing, the image is engraved onto a cylinder because, like offset printing and flexography, it uses a rotary printing press. Once a staple of newspaper photo features, the rotogravure process is still used for commercial printing of magazines, postcards, and corrugated (cardboard) and other product packaging.
54 Gloss describes the shiny coating that
adds a polished look to the floor’s surface. Every flooring category (hardwood, vinyl, laminate) has a gloss level from low to high. Gloss is anopticalproperty which indicates how well a surface reflects light in a specular (mirror-like) direction. It is one of important parameters that are used to describe the visual appearance of an object. The factors that affect gloss are the refractive index of the material, the angle of incident light and the surfacetopography.
Vinyl Tiles
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Being the structure a framed one made of Square Hollow section filled with concrete, we have to choose how to fill the partition separation, and we have done it by selecting lamellar wood shells named XLAM, a specific cross laminated wood typology.
o Category: Walls
o Wall Type: Partition wall o Composition: lamination o Wear Layer: none
o Glue type: Non-formaldehyde o Thickness: 297mm
o Wood type: red fir
Engineered wood, also called composite wood, man-made wood, or manufactured board; includes a range of derivativewood products which are manufactured by binding or fixing the strands, particles, fibers, or veneers or boards of wood, together with adhesives, or other methods of fixation to form composite materials. These products are engineered to precise design specifications which are tested to meet national or international standards. Engineered wood products are used in a variety of applications, from home construction to commercial buildings to industrial products. The products can be used for joists and beams that replace steel in many building projects. Typically, engineered wood products are made from the same hardwoods and softwoods used to manufacture lumber. Sawmill scraps and other wood waste can be used for engineered wood composed of wood particles or fibers, but whole logs are usually used for veneers, such as plywood, MDF or particle board. Some engineered wood products, like oriented strand board (OSB), can use trees from the poplar family, a common but non-structural species.
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Alternatively, it is also possible to manufacture similar engineered bamboo from bamboo; and similar engineered cellulosic products from other lignin-containing materials such as rye straw, wheat straw, rice straw, hemp stalks, kenaf stalks, or sugar cane residue, in which case they contain no actual wood but rather vegetable fibers.
The case we are in though is the Cross-Laminated Timber is a versatile multi-layered panel made of lumber. Each layer of boards is placed cross-wise to adjacent layers for increased rigidity and strength. CLT can be used for long spans and all assemblies, e.g. floors, walls or roofs. CLT has the advantage of faster construction times as the panels are manufactured and finished off site and supplied ready to fit and screw together as a flat pack assembly project.
Laminated Wood
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3.2 Audience
Another important element composing our arena environment are the seating. We have already chosen how these are disposed geometrically in plan but we mustn’t forget we live the ambience in a three dimensional reality. So what we are trying to say is that we must observe what has to happen when the show takes place. First off, we are talking about an arena, and although is an electronic arena, as already said, it keeps the conformation of a traditional one, implying the audience stands higher than the scene.
This is quite simple to achieve by elevating the plan where the audience lies.
Another easy to solve problem is now approaching, the view comfort. If the audience lies in a straight plane, it is not very comfortable for back viewers to have visual obstacles in front of them. The most practical and usual way to solve this problem is creating an angle between seating rows so that every seats has no obstacles between the screen and the eye sight, following the cinema’s practice.
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The height by which the audience will be elevated is not arbitrary either, we chose to raise the level accordingly to the screen height, considering the scene where the players stand must respect certain heights too, and for creating a usable tunnel underneath for emergency purposes such as fire exits.
The seat we chose is the Florans 4000 VIP Stadium Chair with Armrest, having the following characteristics and dimensions.
o Armrest: Plastic Armrest o Chair Back: Fixed
o Chair Seat: Foldable by Gravity o Fabric: Artificial Leather o Foam: Fire Retardent
o Leg: Metal Double Leg - Fixed o Usage: Sport Stadiums
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Artificial leather (Bicast leather) is a fabric or finish intended to substitute for leather in fields such as upholstery, clothing, and fabrics, and other uses where a leather-like finish is required but the actual material is cost-prohibitive, unsuitable, or unusable for ethical reasons.
Production of synthetic, artificial/faux "leathers" has recently evolved so that a shell coating layer goes on top of a synthetic polymer blend, so the definition of "synthetic", "artificial/faux" leather methods of production no longer necessarily requires composite leather blends of coated raw-tanned cowhide grains and/or its fibrous layers.
Special flame retarded grades of plastazote foams are able to meet the requirements of fire safety norms. Additionally, F grades, being inherently nonflammable, are able to meet the Radiant Heat Panel test and have low smoke density, low toxic gas emission and low heat release. This material offer an additional operational temperature limit of 160°C, an improvement of +50°C over the current similar materials. They also offer enhanced chemical and solvent resistance, combined with higher levels of structural rigidity. All of these closed cell foams can be converted easily using traditional foam fabrication techniques such as sawing, routing, gluing, laminating, welding and die-cutting. They can also be thermoformed into complex single component structures providing many benefits over multi-layer foam systems, such
as weight and cost reduction. Plastazote foams are used in many seating and soft trim areas. The low-density closed cell nature of these foams allows significant weight reduction in seat cushions. Additionally, they are used to provide buoyancy or support in crucial areas of seat cushions, improving both comfort and durability. These foams are used to provide soft touch and energy management around seating areas.
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Figure 3.2-3. Chair dimensions Figure 3.2-1. Audience section
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3.3 Stage
The space where players get to use their devices to compete against each other is then called the stage. The stage layout consists of two opposite sides allocated for players to stay during the competition. These elements have to be arranged in a way they don’t face directly each other like in any other sport because peeking into other monitors or devices is not allowed because that would break the gaming rules. So putting this rule in a good use will lead us into set the two gaming stations in an anti-symmetrical way so they are two times opposite to each other, making it very difficult to break this rule.
Another thing we must consider, is the space that separates the scene.
While in other types of building this difference is made by putting a gap between the scene and the spectators’ zone, in this case we create this gap by overlaying the players footboard. It has to be a bunch of centimeters above the floor level for two reasons. The first, the scene has to be separated from the horizontal link the guests use to get up in the audience, just like in every show related building. The second, despite the fact players faces are not the first focus of the show, they must however visible and transmit the feeling they are actually there making the plays.
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Figure 3.3-1 Stage section
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3.4 Links
Reaching the higher spot or the lowest one isn’t just about picking the first path available but is matter of distributing the vertical link and focusing the horizontal ones. We can well apply this practice by spacing every segment of audience by a vertical link and making it accessible from every point of the front side. For disabled people, we instead chose to make them capable of having direct access to the higher seating without having to cross the entire room, by placing a side entrance for disabled purposes. In this way not only is ensured a good spot for them but also the possibility to get out of the arena as quick as possible in case of emergency, as the entering-exiting path is minimal.
We also designed the horizontal links in a matter it characterizes the arena as place where actors and spectators visually meet each other, so as this room lies in the true middle of private paths and public ones, the condition where private entrance and public entrance are opposite is met.
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Prefabricated stairs are available locally and their use can easily equate into a savings of 30 - 40%. Whether you're building track, duplex, multi - family, or custom homes a design or style is available to fit your needs. One of the more complex and expensive carpentry tasks faced by all builders is the stair building process. So, it is safe to say that using pre-fabricated steel stairs over the audience is what fits better in this case.
o Category: Stairs
o Stair Type: prefabricated o Composition: welded profiles o Wear Layer: Vinyl tiles o Steel type: S350
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3.5 Surfaces
The topic related to what covers the surfaces presents in the arena, is always matter of interest because it blends both functionality with appearance.
Needless to say, our first goal inside a room where the speakers are running very loud, is to keep the acoustic insulation at the first place. This means we have to cut off resonances and reverbs as many as possible. Second but not less important is how we want the room to be looking like. We can easily recall that not always these two conditions can be met at once, but in an environment where the main focus is not looking at the wall or the ceiling all the time, we can satisfy the acoustic insulation better than we must respect appearance constraints.
This very filigree profile convinces with its fine groove and its good sound absorbing characteristics in spite of its perforation of only 3.5%. Very adequate for offices, living rooms and restaurants.
o Category: Surfaces o Surface Type: acoustic o Composition: bolted planks o Wear Layer: polish paint o Wood type: fir
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Thanks to the precise tongue and groove connection, planks result in an attractive surface with a joint-free appearance, because the connecting joint matches the dimension of the grooves.
The planks permit simple and flexible assembly. They can be installed by stapling to a timber batten or clamping to a T-bar with Topakustik clips. Sound absorption in suspension height 215 mm (blue) and 55 mm (red).
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3.6 Displays
We talked so much about screens to make it clear that these elements are crucial, because they are the direct link for the audience to follow the show. What concerns this aspect isn’t about the position, that must be necessary above the players just as shown before, but rather the aspect ratio and the spacing between them so they don’t interfere each other.
Starting from the aspect ratio, we choose the standard 16:9 to display the competition but since we have two screens each side of the arena, we must be also careful to the spacing. Considering that each individual has a set of specific parameters determining the average view, we can stand the fact the most important point for this study is the field of view, or better, the boundaries that set the binocular vision distortion limit. Such parameter is 30 degrees for each eye, resulting in a total of 60 degrees both eyes combined. On the contrary we have a total binocular vision limit of lateral view of 45 degrees per eye.
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So what we are going to do is setting up each screen in a way the first row has a maximum of a 60 degrees for the field of view, and for what concern the disturbance coming from the twin screen to the side, we can either apply a little partition in the space between or distancing the two long enough they don’t fall in the field of view.
Conceived for large-sized projections also outdoors, this big frame from Screnline screen is bending and torsion-proof. The fabric with steel eyelets all around its perimeter fixes to a number of sliding bolts positioned in a groove at the back of the aluminum frame. A functional parallel-track system on the frame allows adjusting the fabric in case of expansion due to thermal excursion. The junctions/joints of the segments on the corners and at the center of the long sides are in zinc-coated steel.
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When the length of the base is over 6 meters the screen is equipped with a rear vertical bar with adjustable straps to keep the proper asset. Assembling the segments and the fabric is simple and intuitive. The screen comes with a wall mounting kit with four brackets.
Screen characteristics:
o high resilience aluminium structure
o PVC fabrics with steel eyelets on the perimeter and reinforced corners o fabric adjusting system for thermal expansion
o easy mounting o anti-bending rear bar
o T-stands for floor application o custom sizes
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Figure 3.6-2 Viewing angles from first row
Figure 3.6-3. Viewing angles from last row
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3.7 Windows
Windows functionality in this room is mainly catching daylight for the maintenance to occur without involving extra energy supplies for illuminance. We have thus check for the windows to be transmitting the right amount of light we need for the purpose.
Pilkington Optiphon is the ideal choice of glass in situations where there is excess noise from road, rail or air traffic, or various other sources, for example factories or nightclubs. Pilkington Optiphon is a high quality acoustic laminated glass incorporating a special PVB (PolyVinyl Butyral) interlayer. It offers excellent noise reduction without compromising on light transmittance or impact performance. The desired acoustic performance can be achieved through combining various thicknesses of glass with a PVB interlayer. With a large variety of product combinations, Pilkington Optiphon offers the opportunity to achieve specific noise reduction requirements.
o Category: Windows
o Surface Type: low-transmittance o Composition: PVB Glass
o Interlayer gas: Argon o Safety class: 1
o Layers: 9.1mm/20mm/13.1mm o Rw insulation: 50dB
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Windows also need to be screened by the time the show is running in hours when the daylight still persists but we also need the possibility to have a system capable of letting the sunlight illuminate the room when coming down to the maintenance during daily hours.
This must be planned in order to save energy when possible, also if the room type isn’t quite the one that needs to have windows, like a cinema room or a theater like they are usually planned. The tall space we have at disposal makes It easy to place and use this element of natural lighting without interfering with the structure or the architecture designed until now, if we plan to put it inside the involucre of the arena.
So we chose to include a brise soleil system to put on the inner side of the curtain wall that can also be used for the other areas where sun touches directly surfaces we don’t want to have direct illuminance from the outside. We then also chose a system where it is possible to control the closure level for adapting the needs on the fly at wish.
o Category: Equipment
o Composition: Cold formed Aluminium o Plates shape: Elliptical
o Angle setting: Variable and automated o Plates dimension: 120-140mm
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3.8 Acoustics
Acoustic insulation is also an important element to keep an eye on. We already know that in big indoor open volume environments like theaters and concert rooms we must keep under control the number of acoustic waves reflection to keep audible the acoustic source. In this case the acoustic level from the source is no problem, while it is formed by speakers all over the arena ceiling. On the other side though, while the sound power of the source is adjustable on the fly, the insulation coming from the room elements (walls and furniture) is not.
So we basically have designed the room to have an optimal reverb time so the cheering from the crowd and the audio source combined doesn’t make the show loose acoustic quality. By the way, being this topic very complex, unless it will be requested after publication, we are just calculating the reverb time overall without entering in further detail.
Arena
Surface Type Surface area (m2) Material Attenuation coefficients by Frequency
Hz 125 250 500 1000 2000 4000
Floor 325,00 Vinyl tiles 0,02 0,03 0,03 0,03 0,03 0,02
Walls 60,00 Steel 0,02 0,03 0,03 0,06 0,06 0,05
540,00 Glass 0,03 0,02 0,02 0,02 0,02 0,02
700,00 Topakustik Panels 0,42 0,70 0,76 0,73 0,58 0,45
Ceiling 900,00 Topakustik Panels 0,42 0,70 0,76 0,73 0,58 0,45
Total (m2) 2525,00 αm 0,28 0,45 0,49 0,47 0,38 0,29
Volume (m3) 2100
