ETFE film architecture saves 1,500 tons of steel

The world’s largest mosaic façade made using single layer ETFE film has been produced for Mexico’s first division football club, FC Puebla.

The newly renovated traditional stadium Cuauhtémoc in the Mexican highlands rises to a height of 40 meters and the façade is made of more than 30,000 square meters of film.

Nowofol Kunststoffprodukte extruded the films from the high-performance material 3M Dyneon ETFE, making the film lightweight, which enabled it to build the stadium with 1,500 tons of steel less than a comparable glass façade.

The company manufactured the NOWOFLON ET 6235Z film for the Page 3/4 project in Mexico in three shades and with a thickness of 200 micrometres.

The 160 cm wide films were welded in such a way that a mosaic with 80-centimetre-high fields results in panels of up to six meters wide.

In the production of films made of 3M Dyneon ETFE, no plasticisers are required and due to ETFE resistance of most chemicals, this allows the stadium to cope with the hot and humid climate.

Instead of the 2,500 tons of steel required for a glass construction, 1,000 tons are sufficient for the ETFE façade, a savings of 60 percent, due to the weight per unit area of ETFE being around 95 percent lower than glass.