Molinón facade

El Molinón is a football stadium located in Gijón, Asturias, Spain. It is the stadium of Real Sporting de Gijón, a professional football team. It was inaugurated in 1908 and has a capacity for 30,000 spectators.

The Molinón stadium in Gijón has a unique facade made from a textile membrane developed by the Proasur team. This action is part of a stadium renovation project.

The greatest technical complexity of this project for our team lay in considering the envelope over the different stands of the stadium, which present different circumstances:

• In the case of the east and west stands, the facades are vertical.

• In the case of the north and south facades, the envelope is curved and inclined, which generates trapezoidal panels that resolve the polygonal curve.

The textile panels of the Molinón football stadium were placed on a substructure that in turn is anchored to the main structure of the stadium, which, as an essential requirement, had to withstand the minimum possible wind load. For this purpose, the chosen textile was a micro-perforated one; this perforation (together with the selected system) successfully reduced the wind load compared to other facade covering solutions studied, making the choice of the textile system as an envelope for the stadium decisive.

Furthermore, given its proximity to the sea, both the steel and aluminum substructures have been treated against marine aggression.

For the technical development of the plans, it was necessary to carry out a topographic survey of the current state and a 3D model to develop the panels. This work has required a great deal of precision in both the measurement and the development of the geometry of the panels, since their trapezoidal shape to solve the curved envelope allows for minimal tolerance.

On the other hand, regarding our management of authorizations in this project, it should be noted that it was necessary to close public roads during the assembly phase of the facade, as it involved large panels (up to 12 m in length) that were lifted by crane to a height of more than 20 m for their subsequent anchoring to the substructure. (These special cranes were housed on the main roads throughout the entire process.)

The textile facade of El Molinón stadium has now become its most distinctive feature and has contributed to modernizing its image, while preserving its historical heritage.