Nüssli turns football stadium into handball World Cup arena
For the 2023 Men's Handball World Championship, Stockholm's Tele2 Arena was transformed into a huge handball arena with seating for 22,000 spectators. For this, the event construction company Nüssli created a temporary grandstand.
For the 28th IHF Men's Handball World Championship 2023, held in Poland and Sweden, the venue had to be adapted to the sport and its fans. Long before the kickoff of the World Handball Championship, Krister Bergström, CEO of the Swedish organizing committee, announced online his vision of an unforgettable World Championship, saying: "We will place great emphasis on the event atmosphere on the final weekend in Stockholm. Our goal is to make the world stand still when the matches are played."
In order to create this event atmosphere, the project team from Nüssli Germany developed its own smaller World Cup arena within the Tele2 Arena football stadium for the nine matches of the Handball World Cup at the venue in Stockholm. On the one hand, the existing infrastructure of the Tele2 Arena could be used for the big event. On the other hand, the arena in the stadium did not offer half-empty spectator stands due to an oversized venue.
Construction work began just under two weeks before the Games in Stockholm. 26 trucks delivered a total of 450 tons of system material. Within 10 days, the project team erected a temporary spectator stand with 8,000 seats, which was integrated into the stadium's existing grandstand system and, with its rows of seats, formed its own custom-fit arena around the handball court. In total, 22,000 seats were created with the best line of sight for the fans.
Today handball grandstand, tomorrow medal podium
The decision to use the infrastructure of an existing stadium and temporarily adapt it to the needs of one's own event should contribute to sustainability. In addition, the material used for the stands and the other temporary infrastructures moves in a continuous cycle from event to event over the years. In the system construction method, any type of temporary structure can be flexibly planned and implemented for any size of event and dismantled after the event without leaving any residue. Thus, construction elements that just formed the grandstand at the World Handball Championships may be in use weeks later in the medal podium of a ski world cup race.
