Now home to 12,000 spectators in the Olympics Park and some of the tallest athletes in the Games, the structural engineering work on the temporary London 2012 Basketball Arena was done by a Bristol firm, Fenton Holloway on Park Street, located in offices above Superdry.

The company’s team of engineers designed the entire building envelope including steel frame and tensile fabric, but not the seating inside or the foundations.

In another Briatol link, Base Structures, based in St Vincent’s Trading Estate on Feeder Road, manufactured and fitted the tensile fabric to the Fenton Holloway design.

I was fortunate enough to watch two games of basketball in the Arena on Sunday evening and can confirm that the structure is a magnificent construction, especially for something that is only temporary.

The noise created inside is extremely loud, and outside, when it is dark, the Arena slowly changes colour, adding an extra dimension to its daytime white exterior.

It will also seat 10,000 for the Paralympic Games for basketball, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby and handball. After that, the building will be dismantled and re-used in a different location.

The structure consists of a series of curved latticed steel roof trusses and tapered 23m tall vertical legs forming a 35m high portal frame spanning 96m which together with the ‘lean to’ gable end portal frames results in an overall building length of 114m.

A Fenton Holloway spokesman said:  “Drawing upon our unique experience of having provided engineering services from the concept stage right through to preparing detailed designs for manufacturers and fabricators, we were able to successfully deliver a buildable design and provide comprehensive fully co-ordinated information to both the steel fabricator and membrane manufacturer.”