Millennium Dome

The Millennium Dome on the Greenwich Peninsula in south-east London was built to house an exhibition celebrating the start of the third millennium. With one of the world's largest fabric roofs, it is a landmark of tensioned membrane construction. Since 2007 it has housed the O2 entertainment district and arena.

Design

The dome was designed by architect Richard Rogers, with Buro Happold as structural and services engineers. Its dimensions were chosen symbolically:

• a plan diameter of 365 m (1,200 ft), roughly one metre for each day of the year;
• a central height of 52 m (170 ft), roughly one metre for each week;
• twelve yellow towers, each about 100 m (330 ft) high.

Structure and fabric

The towers support a network of steel cables from which the canopy is suspended. The canopy is made of PTFE-coated glass-fibre fabric, in 72 segments of two panels each. Plans to use PVC-coated polyester were dropped after a protest led by Greenpeace over PVC. The entire roof structure is said to weigh less than the air contained inside the building.

Opening and cost

A private opening took place on 31 December 1999, and the public were admitted from 1 January 2000. The exhibition ran through 2000 and then closed. The dome structure itself cost about £43 million, while the whole project, including the exhibition, cost about £789 million.

Conversion to the O2

The dome was leased for redevelopment in December 2001. Because cranes could not be used under the canopy, the new arena's roof was assembled on the ground inside the dome and lifted into place. The arena, occupying about 40% of the dome, opened on 24 June 2007.

Storm damage

On 18 February 2022, during Storm Eunice, six segments of the fabric roof were torn away and around 1,000 people were evacuated. The venue reopened on 25 February after repairs.

Significance

The dome demonstrated the scale achievable with cable-supported fabric roofs and is a key reference in the history of tensile membrane architecture.