Utah Olympic Oval

Sometimes called the fastest ice on earth, the Oquirrh Park Olympic Oval, or Utah Olympic Oval hosted speed skating events for the 2002 winter Olympics. Great attention went into the concrete surface beneath the ice was poured in a single pour to eliminate seams. It is is super flat and super smooth to produce the most even cooling possible. Eight world speed records were set during the Olympics. Nine of the eleven possible world records are currently held on by this oval

The oval also holds another claim to fame. It was one of the original 12 LEED (Leadership in Environmental Engineering & Design) pilot projects. It's unusual suspended cable roof system serves two purposes. First, It allows a 90 meter column free clear space within the oval. Second: it does this without the use of large structural trusses. These trusses would have been very deep to span that large of an area. Use of the cables allowed the profile of the structure to be smaller, vastly reducing the volume of air that had to be cooled. The Utah oval stands only 55' tall, compared to Nagano's 100' tall oval. It also save a ton of steel; make that 950 tons of steel.

Local architects, Gillies Stransky Brems and Smith (GSBS) were the architects for the project. International engineering powerhouse Ove Arup & Partners were the structural engineers for the project which was completed in 2000.

Links: Architectural Record, GSBS Architects, Oval Website ,