The Challenge The halls of the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre are separated by a vast open air Plaza that was used, until recently, as a visitors car park. Walking from one hall to another, across “Capital Plaza” in temperatures of up to 38°C (100°F) was like walking across a desert in the midday sun! That is until Shankland & Cox Architects specified Fabric Architecture’s award- winning “Pagoda” tensile structures to create two shaded walkways linking the buildings. Capital Plaza is used to extend the NEC’s event space, particularly during the annual International Defence Exhibition (IDEX). Making use of Capital Plaza increases the overall floor capacity to 124,000sqm for this particular event. Therefore the tensile structures had to be semi-permanent so they could be dismantled tem

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