TEXTILES.ORG
By Jake Kulju
Despite being São Paulo’s largest soccer club, with more than 30 million fans, and the second largest club in the nation, the Corinthians club didn’t have its own sports facility prior to the 2014 World Cup. Established in 1910, the team had been playing its matches at the Pacaembu municipal stadium for years.
The new arena hosted the first 2014 World Cup match on June 12th, a particular honor to the working class neighborhood of Itaquera, where Arena Corinthians is located. The stadium is more accurately called a facility, as it incorporates an auditorium, a museum, restaurants and other multi-use spaces.
In addition, the arena is home to the largest video screen in the world. Constructed with Serge Ferrari’s Précontraint 1002 S2 fabric, the opaque composite material screened event images during the World Cup and it can be used for other forms of entertainment and education in the future.
“The architect included Serge Ferrari tensioned fabric in his project for two main reasons: to artfully conceal the metallic structure of the cover, providing an elegant visual to be seen from the bleachers, and to allow the projection of images on its surface,” Nascimento says. “The architect insisted on a surface that was as smooth as possible—he didn’t want to see any welding or any other element between the panels.“
The arena is an embodiment of the region’s economic dynamics, which, in the long term, should ensure development of transport infrastructures, educational facilities and setting up of private companies.