SCX's retractable roof over No.1 Court at Wimbledon from SCX Ltd on Vimeo.
Sheffield-based SCX has completed the first year of a three-year project to construct a retractable roof for the new No.1 Court at The All England Lawn Tennis Club. SCX Special Projects, part of the SCX Group, was awarded the contract after successfully designing, manufacturing and installing a similar retractable roof over Wimbledon’s Centre Court in 2009.
Work is on schedule for completion in time for the 2019 tournament. SCX Group managing director Simon Eastwood said: “We are very proud to have built the original retractable roof on Centre Court, and subsequently to have been chosen by the AELTC to work on No.1 Court. It’s testament to the successful engineering solutions and skills we used first time around that we were in a position to embark on the second project. SCX is now firmly one of the leading builders of kinetic architecture in the UK.”
According to SCX, the new roof has already used more than 3,500 tons of steel, the equivalent of 295 buses or six Airbus airplanes. “It’s a very complicated project,” Philip Brook, chairman of the AELTC, told the London Times. “It took three years to put a roof on Centre Court and it’s much the same this time around."
Photo Credit: AELTC / KSS Design Group