Wimbledon Centre Court - Retractable Roof

London, UK

New Era Opened as Roof Closes

The retractable roof over Wimbledon’s Centre Court is a type of ‘folding fabric concertina’ tensile structure. This allows the roof to be folded into a highly compressed area and parked over the fixed canopy when not in use over the court.More than 7000 square metres of a very strong flexible translucent woven Tenara material have been used for the fabric architecture roof, which will still allows a level of natural light to reach the grass. The roof has been designed to close and open in under 10 minutes. Each of the nine bays of structural fabric is clamped on either side by prismatic steel trusses spanning approximately 75 metres. The ends of each truss are supported by a set of wheels that move along a track positioned on the new ‘fixed’ roof of the Centre Court.