Master Industrie has achieved a huge feat by working with the U Arena, the new, largest covered venue in Europe.
Its multi-purpose hall with various configurations provides a space which can be optimized for different events: cultural shows; sporting events, including Racing 92’s matches for which U Arena is the official venue; company conferences and seminars; live concerts by top French and international artists…
An iconic metropolitan Parisian venue:
At the gateway of Paris, U Arena has become an iconic, metropolitan Parisian venue. Located in the heart of the La Defense district, the arena is close to the capital’s most famous landmarks including the Louvre museum, the Champs-Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe. Its location makes it easily accessible for international spectators, especially when arriving at Paris airports.
Owned by the businessman Jacky Lorenzetti, Ovalto’s CEO and Racing 92’s president, U Arena was designed by the architect and planner Christian de Portzamparc. Conceived as a “floating concrete shell above the ground”, this ultra-modern structure comprises a necklace of glass and aluminium scales that glow at night and a concrete ring under a huge roof weighing more than 4,000 tons.
The U Arena: a superlative venue
Biggest covered venue in Europe, flexible capacity from 10,000 to 40,000 spectators, the biggest screen in the world (2,400m²), Wi-Fi system that can accommodate 15,000 simultaneous connections, 32 video-projectors, 4G networks, a ground “map” of 4,000 m², 1,800 VIP seats in 95 boxes and 8 rooms… U Arena seems to be the most modern stadium in the world.
A venue with various configurations:
The venue was equipped by Master Industrie with telescopic stands for more than 4,200 seats. Unique worldwide, the arrangement of the stands in a U shape provides excellent visibility for all spectators and contributes to audience engagement and emotion, hence the name U Arena.
As expected, the stands allow for a variety of configurations: completely open for some sporting events and partially open for others (matches requiring a grass pitch, for example) and for concerts requiring a standing-only pit. Moreover, for shows with smaller audiences, some stands can be closed and others opened as the venue is equipped with a curtain enabling modifications to the venue size. But the configuration changes go deeper than just the opening and closing of stands. During concerts and shows, the stands in the south section can be removed completely to create the spectators’ entrance.
Regarding seating, black-grey plastic seats, which match the stands and the venue color, were selected for their sober and refined design. Foam cushions are added to seats to enable U Arena spectators to be comfortably seated throughout the performance.
The press area consists of around 50 seats MASTER Ontario with custom-made tablets, this time made of black-grey wood, still in keeping with the venue’s design.
A successful inauguration:
The long-awaited U Arena inauguration on 19 October 2017 was a great success. The full arena was host to the legendary band, the Rolling Stones, the first act to perform in the stadium, echoing 1998 and the inauguration of the Stade de France. Mick Jagger and his band totally rocked the packed space and the public was wowed by both the event and the venue.
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