project EXTERIORS The canopy allows plenty of sunshine to keep the naturalturf playing field lush and healthy.
Canopy Adds A Kick To Sports Venue A stadium gets the world’s largest polycarbonate canopy to shade fans and enhance their experience.
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occer players and fans celebrate “the beautiful game,” as superstar Pele called it, in a Kansas City, KS, stadium unsurpassed for high-tech, fan-friendly features. The crowning touch is a translucent, crystalline canopy that shades all 18,500 seats, yet allows diffused sunlight to flood the field. It also reflects the roar of the fans, amplifying the sounds to create, “an electric place to be,” according to Jeff Spear, AIA NCARB. Spear is lead project designer and a principal in the Kansas City, MO, practice of Populous, the architecture firm responsible for the leadingedge design of Livestrong Sporting Park. “The canopy is a very important part of the overall design, which wouldn’t have worked as well without it,” said Spear. “The players and the fans love it. It’s exceeding our expectations.”
Aiming for the sky Those expectations were high for this new $200-million home of Sporting Kansas City, the soccer team formerly known as KC Wizards. After shuttling from one venue to another for 15 years, they now 28
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The largest polycarbonate canopy in North America provides shade for fans at Livestrong Stadium, while evoking the curved path of a soccer ball.
call home one of the world’s most sophisticated stadiums, designed to evoke the soaring curve of a soccer ball and the athleticism of the players. The firm responsible for design engineering of the stadium’s canopy—the largest polycarbonate stadium canopy in North America—is Duo-Gard Industries Inc., Canton, MI. Duo-Gard specializes in custom design, engineering, and fabrication of architectural canopies, often involving high-performance-polycarbonate glazing technology and structural framing innovations. “Meeting the architect’s demands for this unique project was a function of understanding a multifaceted challenge,” said David Miller, DuoGard’s president. That challenge included several specific goals for the stadium’s polycarbonate canopy, which is more than 1,800 feet long and ranges from 25 feet to 70 feet in depth. Those goals included: • aligning mullions while transitioning the canopy from 3 feet to 9 feet from one level to the next and while flowing around the corners. At the same time, the system steadily dropped 30
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feet from one end to the other. • creating a low-profile system to minimize shadowing and the use of a steel support structure. The project team designed a system that is 3 3/4 inches high. The previous system was 9 inches. • using a glazing that can be extruded in 41-foot lengths, meets the structural requirements of 83 PSF, and allows direct sun to support the health of the natural-turf system. The Duo-Gard team had to adapt the polycarbonate extruder to make custom panels that would meet the desired performance. • designing the system for a low-pitch application that allows free flow of water without pooling. A low-profile plastic cap prohibits water pooling while allowing airflow to evacuate the panels of any condensation.
Shelter in the outdoors The structural demands were extraordinary. In meeting them, Duo-Gard’s engineers created a low-profile, long-span system with performance and savings unprecedented in the industry. “One impetus for the canopy was
