Sport Palace Rome

Annibale Vitellozzi – Pier Luigi Nervi – Sport Palace, Rome Italy, 1956-1958

The Palazzetto dello Sport is a multifunctional building, mainly used for sports use, located in Rome.
Conceived and designed in 1956 by the architect Annibale Vitellozzi and the engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, and built between 1956 and 1957 as a facility intended to host some events of the XVII Olympic games in Rome, it is still in operation and hosts sporting events and concerts .
The project presented by Vitellozzi, consisted of a circular system of just under 60 meters in diameter, not unlike the contemporary Palazzo dello Sport by Marcello Piacentini and Nervi himself but, unlike the latter, dominated by a covering dome that overflows from the perimeter of the room of about 10 meters; the diameter of the external cover is approximately 78 meters and the overall area of ​​the system is approximately 4 800 square meters.
This roof is made entirely of reinforced concrete and is prefabricated according to wedge-shaped modules, wider towards the outside and then close towards the center of the cap; to support the roof are 36 Y-shaped trestles, arranged along the perimeter of the system at an angular distance of 10 degrees and linear of 6.30 meters from each other; the trestles are inclined according to the tangent at the point of intersection with the concrete cap.

The structural characteristics of the system: 36 radially arranged Y-stands support a spherical cap of small thickness and convey its thrust to the ground. The trestles lie on the same surface defined by the cap and represent them so to speak the continuation to the ground. The real static behavior of such a structural system is that of a membrane of revolution and is characterized by an exchange of forces in the two directions defined by the meridians and parallels of the dome, that is, by an intrinsically spatial static regime.
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