Raising the roof on the Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games in LondonWork has started this week to lift into place the massive 2,800 ton, wave-shaped, Welsh-made steel roof of the London 2012 Aquatics Centre. The Aquatics Centre will mark the ‘gateway’ to the Olympic Park during the 2012 Games and its sweeping design by award-winning British architect Zaha Hadid will be one of the London Olympics' most striking images. Lifting the roof onto the Centre is one of the most complex engineering and construction challenges of the entire Olympic Park - and the 160m long roof is now being assembled on site with fabricated steelwork delivered by Rowecord Engineering in Newport, Wales. Once the huge steel roof frame is complete, it will be lowered onto its three permanent roof supports, which have been built with 20,000 tons of concrete. The roof has been designed, through wind tunnel testing and computer modelling, to stretch, twist and contract in response to the effects of snow, wind and changing temperatures.
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