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Soccer City is the home of South African football. The opening ceremony and the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ final will take place here.
Joburg’s other World Cup venue, Ellis Park Stadium, will host five first-round matches, one second-round match and one quarter-final.
The calabash emerges
"As FIFA we are confident that preparations for the 2010 World Cup in terms of transport, security, accommodation and stadium construction are going on very well. We are getting what we need from South Africa in terms of our agreement for the country to host the event."
Celebrating progress, September 2007
The roof structure is a complex affair: 12 54 tonne A-frame steel structures, which form part of the 7 000 tonnes of structural steel imported from Italy, will support the PTFE membrane and polycarbonate roof. An important element of the roof is the façade that will form an outer shell of the stadium. Designed and constructed by Austrian company Rieder Smart Elements, and metal materials manufacturer Valenta Metallbau, the facade will use fibre-C glassfibre concrete, which is highly durable and fire resistant. The façade, which is divided into 10 vertical sections, will consist of six colours and three textures of the calabash. The stadium’s 94 700 orange seats are being installed on the lower and upper tiers. Made from polycarbonate material, they have been designed by a seat designer from the United Kingdom. That organisation has established a company in Durban and about 95 percent of the components for the seats are made locally. The pitch grass will be planted in situ, four months before the stadium is finished in October 2009.. Seeding will be done on site so that the grass roots will be deeper and the resultant grass more lush than ready-to-plant grass, according to Aarts. The stadium will not only be used for soccer matches, but will be a venue for rugby games as well, according to Rod Pearce, the deputy director: project management: legacy, in the City's 2010 unit. "The stadium pitch is designed in such a way that we won't have any problem hosting rugby matches." Strategically located close to Soccer City is Safa House, where the FIFA offices and those of the 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa are housed. With its distinctive football-shaped dome, the building is clearly one of the legacies of the World Cup. The area around Soccer City Stadium is also undergoing an upgrade. Running north of the stadium is the Soweto Highway, which has been widened and forms part of the City’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system. More than R120-million is being pumped into the Nasrec precinct, in which the stadium falls. Here the upgraded Expo Centre will house the International Broadcast Centre (IBC), the nerve centre for all television operations and the world's news agencies for the six week of the World Cup. As part of the upgrades, the precinct will have a fully functional transport hub, including a railway station. The rail system will serve future industrial, commercial and residential developments planned for the area after the soccer tournament. Besides the rail station, the transport hub will have taxi, bus and rail drop off and pick up points. The total public transport capacity of the hub is projected to be 23 280 an hour. The precinct plans
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