The Avicii Arena, or globe, as they call it, is a multi-arena that can hold up to 16,000 people. It is the only arena of its kind in the shape of a sphere and at the same time the largest spherical building in the world. The area of the structure is 600,000 cubic meters and its diameter is 110 meters.
The building was built for the Ice Hockey World Championship in 1989. The decision in favor of spherical architecture was not chosen by chance. As part of the project “Swedish Solar System” all over Sweden are “scattered” different buildings and monuments symbolizing the planets, stars and other celestial bodies. The Avicii Arena is the heart of the country, the Sun of the Swedish Solar System.
The arena is located in the Globen City neighborhood, which was created especially for her. It has a capacity of 16,000 people during concerts and 13,850 during hockey games.
Construction of the Arena began in 1988 and it was opened on February 19, 1989. As conceived by the architects, the spherical building represents the Sun in the Swedish Solar System, the world’s largest model of the solar system. The building consists of 48 curved steel columns. The inner shell of the sphere consists of lattice aluminum, while the outer shell is made of thin, 140-mm-thick metal plates laid flat on the lattice. Additional support is provided to the fragile dome by aluminum columns. The diameter of the arena is 110 meters.
On February 2, 2009 the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson acquired ownership of Stockholm Globen Arena. Since then, the arena became known as Ericsson-Globen.
Now it hosts concerts of world celebrities, important hockey matches, the arena has twice hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2000 and in 2016.