At last the new roof on Centre Court, Wimbledon, was rolled out on Monday evening, and in all the fuss about the roof and of course the first tennis match beneath it, and the lateness of the hour, was anyone interested in what it was made of? According to its designers, Populous, the retractable roof is made of "durable Tenara fabric, concertinaed across the span of the ceiling. Held up by ten 77 metre roof trusses, each weighing 70 tonnes, the fabric displays a 40% translucency which allows light to penetrate and crucially reach the grass below. It takes a maximum of ten minutes to close the structure which used approximately 5,200 sq m of fabric to create. 100% of materials used for the roof are recyclable."
And what is this wonder-product Tenara? It's PolyTetraFluoroEthylene (PTFE) - most commonly known by its DuPont brand name Teflon.
While on the subject of tennis, it has been brought to the Blog's attention that the annual EPCA tennis tournament, held at the conference for many a year, has been dropped along with the other sports events, because of the relatively low number of participants. Sign of the times ...
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