Vertigo, has completed the UK’s largest ever sports stadium rigging project at Arsenal’s FC’s 60,355 capacity Emirates Stadium in north London, installing eight giant banners emblazoned with striking images of the club’s greatest players.
It follows an exceptional few months for the London based company, which has provided production rigging design and installation for the BBC Sports Personality of The Year 2009, Children In Need, the Selfridges Christmas Lights switch-on, Harry Potter – The Half Blood Prince premiere in Leicester Square, Ford’s stand at the Shanghai Motor Show, and live productions of the BBC’s So You Think You Can Dance, Mama Mia in Oslo and Phantom of the Opera in Buenos Aires.
The Emirates project, created to emphasise the link between Arsenal’s glory days at its former Highbury home nearby and the current resurgence of its team under manager Arsène Wenger, features massive banners, each 37 metres wide by 12.5 metres high, adorning each of the eight ‘cores’ that ring the stadium.
The banners, created by McKenzie Clark with creative agency 20:20 for Arsenal FC, feature images of great players from the club’s past such as George Graham, Thierry Henri, Liam Brady, Tony Adams, George Armstrong and David Seaman as well as giant Arsenal and Emirates Airlines logos.
Vertigo was contracted to implement the audacious design that called for the huge banners, made of a PVC type weatherproofed material, mounted on a steel ladder system designed by Vertigo, to be attached directly into the stadium’s concrete walls.
“Our biggest physical challenge,” says Vertigo Joint MD Tim Roberts, “was bringing all the various large, galvanized support structure component parts together over a six-week construction period that required the site to be completely cleared of equipment, cherry pickers and workers, before every match.”
Before that could begin, Roberts worked closely with the creative agency to help them understand what could and could not be done with large external displays given the exposed locations and the need to plan for the usual extremes of weather.
The team bolted the supporting ladders directly into the wall using proprietary fixings and steelwork fabricated in-house at Vertigo’s south London facilities. The final step involved Vertigo’s riggers gently raising each completed banner and stretching it across the face of the support structure.
Martin Sloots, joint MD, comments: “The banners are designed to be seen from 360 degrees – from the Holloway Road side, from Ashburton Grove and from the trains that pass the stadium’s east flank. Every approach to the stadium is adorned with the new images. And the support structures could easily be used to support lightweight LED advertising panels, too, if required. It was a hugely challenging job, through which all parties learned a lot about such a concept, and we are looking forward to deploying these skills on other stadium projects in future.”
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