Construction

Construction began in the autumn of 2014 and took place incessantly also in winter months up to its opening in December of 2015, Before starting the foundations wide excavation of the construction pit took place in the extent of 55,000 m3, of which 20,000m3 was used for backfilling the underground part of the building.

The foundations and basement floors were made of reinforced concrete in semi staggered raster of 8m x 8m, which derives from the organisation of indoor parking spaces. The outer wall façade of basement floors is done as ventilated with metal coating in which among other things also all entrance doors and inclined sectional doors of the multi-purpose hall were integrated. The architectural focus and implementation challenges of the underground part of the building are surely the reinforced concrete roof lights in the shape of inclined truncated cones and fluid design of the portals of the main entrance and drive-ins in the basement hall. The sheathing elements for exposed concrete were made individually based on 3D architectural plans.

The building above ground is designed as a cylinder of outside diameter of 29m, made in combination from steel and reinforced concrete construction. All floors above the entrance halls are visually connected through the air void in the centre of the cylinder, which concludes at the top with a walk-glass roof at the level of the roof terrace. The pavilion on the roof terrace is made of steel trusses and functionally presents the head of the reinforced concrete communication core. The façade is completely glazed for thermal insulation, in the case of the pavilion with the use of curved glass. The final outer image is achieved with horizontal blinds made of glued laminated larch, which are mounted on the basic structure of the building through steel substructure. The density of the blinds is determined by the exposure to sunlight, the internal functional structure of the building and the interesting views. The selection of larch wood was made for all the buildings at Planica.

The building installations were adapted to the planned multi-purpose use and controlled via the central control system. The underground hall is among other things equipped with a floor heating or cooling system with the possibility of regulating the temperature of the concrete core between -10 and +25 °C via heating pumps, which exploit the groundwater from wells in the area of Planica. The outside arrangement includes all the necessary utility connections for different scenarios of organising events.

Exceptional effort has been made in installing and calibrating the vertical and horizontal wind tunnel, which are connected to a single air loop. The plant among other things includes two fans of diameter over 300 cm and total power of 1.8 MW, which are placed in the lowest basement floor. The vertical wind tunnel is done in arc safety glass with the total height of 600 cm and diameter of 360 cm. The horizontal wind tunnel is 600 cm in length, 330 cm in height and 480 cm in width. The airflow reaches the maximum speed of up to 250 km/h in the vertical wind tunnel.