What’s got a price tag of R4.5 billion, will take 32 months to complete, is the height of a 15-storey building and will play a sizeable part in hosting by far the greatest soccer spectacle South Africa has ever seen? The new Green Point Stadium!

Construction is racing ahead at this 2010 World Cup stadium in Cape Town, and the forecast is that it will be completed by December 2009. We dug a little deeper to bring you some interesting facts:

Facts about the 2010 Green Point Stadium:

About the construction project:

• Net construction value: R4.5 billion
• Project start: 26 March 2007
• Practical completion: 14 December 2009
• Overall duration: 32 Months
• Staff employed at peak: 300
• Trade labour employed at peak: 2 300
• Cranes at peak: 21
• Project agents: 10

About the finished stadium:

There will be 68 000 seats (including 13 000 temporary) and it will host six first round matches, one second round, one quarter-final and one semi-final.

The stadium’s footprint is equivalent to six city blocks and it is 50m tall (same as a 15-storey building), and the dimensions of the field area will be 290m x 265m x 48m.

There will be 250 VIP suites, basement parking for 1200 cars and 16 lifts throughout the stadium, as well as a 1 800 square metre conference hall.

Provision will be made for 120 wheelchairs, with additional wheelchair positions / removable seats for accompanying families.

The design for the 2010 Green Point Stadium uses natural light for ambience and to save energy; the façade is covered with an open mesh fabric that plays with the natural light.

The Stadium’s roof line was designed to be as low as functionally possible as to ensure that views around the stadium remained protected. Ideally, the designers would have liked to dig the stadium deeper into the ground so that all visiting spectators would flow into a bowl in the earth.

However, the stadium could not be sunk into the ground as the hard rock under Green Point Common would mean that the builders would have to blast out the rock for a period of two years, which was not feasible due to time constraints.

The roof of the stadium is based on the design of a bicycle wheel which provides a perfect example and system for a roof structure as the outer rim of the structure provides the support and collects all the forces for the entire system.

When designing the roof of the stadium, the engineers had to take into account the notoriously strong winds of Cape Town. Thus, the roof was designed in such a way that the wind will affect the roof by creating a suction that causes an upward pull on the roof, instead of pushing the roof down.

Additionally, noise creation had to be considered in the design of the roof and as a result the engineers created a roof that allows the noise produced by the crowd to be reflected back into the stadium. Similarly, light pollution was eliminated by incorporating the floodlights into the roof, positioned at a downward angle.

With less than 350 days to go until the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, it’s certainly time to start planning which games you want to see. See the full 2010 Soccer World Cup Match Schedule and find out more about 2010 FIFA World Cup Tickets.

To see all the most important 2010 locations such as stadiums and fan parks, please download our interactive 2010 Google Earth Map.

If you’re in Cape Town, make sure you pay a visit to the fascinating Green Point Stadium Visitor Centre, where you can discover the colourful history about soccer in Cape Town and South Africa, and get a tangible taste of what’s to come in 2010.

Browse our Sport & 2010 section for the latest news about the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.