Every year during the French Open, the world’s best tennis players compete on the clay courts of the Stade Roland Garros in Paris. To ensure that the sporting events can also take place in bad weather conditions, the central stadiums “Court Philippe Chatrier” and “Court Simonne Mathieu” have recently been equipped with closable roofs in recent years. The competition for the roofing of the “Court Suzanne Lenglen” with its more than 10,000 seats, which was already announced in 2019, was won by Dominique Perrault Architecture (Paris). The winning project consists of a steel structure with an integrated folded roof membrane, known as “pleated”, and a static framework. In 2024, work on the roof structure is scheduled to be completed and Court Suzanne Lenglen will become, among other things, the venue for the boxing competitions that will be held during the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Participants and guests at the French Open 2023 can already see the intention of Perrault’s design. Completed in time for the tournament the roof facade’s stainless steel mesh from GKD gives the stadium an elegant, light and open character. It was used as a transparent, curved facade on two sides of the facility. “For the task at hand, the developers at GKD created a new mesh with the designation ESCALE-7X1.5-200X30 that is unique in its open area of around 56% and in its dimensions,” explains Philipp Sautter, responsible for Product Development & Application Technology at GKD. Fabric made of 200 mm spirals nestles on a 1,200 m² surface. “It fits the contour of the structure perfectly.”

The project involved a number of technical challenges, but GKD experts solved them with a special attachment solution for the unconventional substructure. The breakthrough came with the newly developed Tensiomesh system. With the system, the pretension of the stainless steel mesh can be precisely adjusted and controlled at any time.

With the design of the roof, Dominique Perrault remains true to his philosophy: clear design, functional and aesthetic. For Dominique Perrault Architecture, the building with its airy façade embodies “freedom and elegance”. In terms of urban planning, the construction is intended to bridge the gap between the city and nature, or rather between the Boulogne-Billancourt district and the Bois de Boulogne urban forest.

Dominique Perrault and GKD have been working together for many years. In 1988, Perrault used metal mesh on a large scale for interior design for the first time in the construction of the French National Library. With its manufacturing expertise as the world market leader for metal mesh, plastic mesh and spiral mesh solutions, GKD developed and produced the architectural meshes, which were new at the time. Perrault was awarded the “Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture” for the major project in the heart of Paris.

Further information about TENSIOMESH: https://www.gkd-group.com/en/tensiomesh/