At Atlanta Falcons’ Mercedes-Benz Stadium, extraordinary rooftop ‘petals’ are going in

Two and ¹⁄₂ years after the Atlanta Falcons’ new stadium broke ground, its already famous rooftop “petals” are being installed, with plans to start actually moving them in a few months.

Engineering News-Record reports this week in excruciatingly technical detail that eight movable petals are being built right now on a “daring kinetic roof” that engineers on the project are calling one of the most complex — and heaviest — rooftops around.

Atop the now $1.5-billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium project, the eight petals will open and close like an oculus.

Just below them, the colosseum will feature the largest video board in the world — a massive suspended halo that will loop the opening.

The stadium encompasses 2 million square feet, and the fixed roof alone has 17,000 tons of steel.

Crawler cranes are reportedly on site now to install these petals, which project leaders hope to finish in March. “Tests on the petals' travel mechanism,” the website notes, “are scheduled to begin in April.”

That could be quite a show.

• Fixed Mega-Roof of Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium Spanning on Its Own [ENR]