There isn't a bad seat in the house at the newly redeveloped Sydney Football Stadium in Moore Park.

Already an icon, and a site of rich sporting history, the new 42,500-seat stadium that was designed by Cox Architecture elevates player and fan experiences by amplifying traditional stadium features into stunning designs that afford modern conveniences.

Designed with huge crowds and state-of-the-art technologies in mind, this project is an excellent example of how Rondo's expertise in customised and compliant wall designs caters to crucial elements such as crowd pressure, and Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment (FF&E).

With large amounts of visitors moving through high-impact zones of the stadium at any one time, internal walls in areas like hallways and thoroughfares are subject to added crowd loads.

Rondo Design Engineers calculated these non-standard loads to produce customised wall designs that are compliant with the National Construction Code sections associated with horizontal imposed actions relating to crowd movement.

Engaged by builder John Holland, contractor Sydney Plaster implemented the compliant Rondo designs, where back-to-back steel studs at 250mm centres were installed with two rows of double punch nogging tracks for our MAXIjamb studs.

This firmly supported Gyprock’s Impactchek 13mm thick plasterboard, by allowing the heavy loads to be transferred from the plasterboard, directly into the steel stud frame.

Our Rondo steel framing and compliant designs are ideal for crowd pressure walls due to the ease of installation and safety.

In areas such as security rooms, attachment of FF&E also contributed to loads on the walls, where heavy security system hardware weighing up to 65kg was attached to 5.7m high walls, while protruding 500mm out from the plasterboard. 

In most wall scenarios, the wind load would exceed seismic forces, but in this case, the added weight of FF&E was required to be included in load calculations, which greatly increased the seismic load, causing it to surpass standard wind load forces.

Taking the customised approach, Rondo Engineers designed security room steel stud walls to meet the higher load to ensure seismic requirements and compliance were met.

This really highlights the importance of a project-specific design approach, and how compliance factors affected by the presence, positioning, and weight of FF&E on walls, can transform the definition of a compliant design.

Project details

Architect: Cox Architecture

Builder: John Holland

Contractors: Sydney Plaster

Featured Rondo Products:

  • MAXIframe® External Wall Framing System
  • Steel Stud & Track Framing System
  • Key-Lock® Concealed Ceiling System
  • Duo® Exposed Grid Ceiling System