TALK: New engineering materials and methods into the “country of the future”, Brazil

Designers work with new materials and analysis methods and can stimulate political thinkers to envisage new images of a future communal society. Technological progress cannot beconsidered separate from social development. Designers involved with future‐oriented planning of the builtenvironment can embrace holistic processes that imply construction with innovative materials, energyproduction, environmental protection and economic feasibility. The FIFA World Cup 2014 offered stimuli to modernize public infrastructure, and more particularly stadia, in Brazil and contribute to permanent infrastructure. Cable‐stayed and membrane structure, or more specifically spoke wheel roofs, were little knownin Brazil and had never been implemented in the country. The competition proposals of Schlaich Bergermannand Partner, offered them the opportunity to introduce their lightweight design philosophy, into this South American country.