Maffeis Engineering completed the full design of structural steelwork, concrete foundations and fabric roofing of the tensile shading roof for the Okaz Market Theatre, located near Ta’if in Saudi Arabia. Maffeis provided also shop drawings of the steelwork and of fabric roofing and support for the erection phase.

The steel structure consists of 3 main lattice girders arches, spanning 110m, with the each of the 2 external arches connected to the central one by means of 6 secondary lattice girders.

The roofing is made of PVC panels internal to the steel structure that are put into shape by flying masts, while an external panel is tensioned by a cable-net, for a total of 11000 m² of fabric surface. The fabric and cable-net shape have been put through an advanced form-finding iterative process.

The design of the internal pipe-to-pipe connections have been developed with the aid of an internally developed software, able to identify the typology of the node and automatically verify the connections against the Code strength prescription.