For Immediate Release
PUMA® City Makes Its Global Debut at the Start of
Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009 in Alicante, Spain
Twenty-Four Steel Shipping Containers Are Retrofitted and Transformed Into A Mobile Retail And Event Space at Select Ports of Call Throughout the World’s Most Extreme
Around-the-World Ocean Race
Alicante, Spain, September 19, 2008 – In preparation for the start of the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009, PUMA® today unveiled PUMA City at the opening of the race’s official port village in Alicante, Spain.
A tour de force of architecture and design, the massive 11,000 square-foot structure is made from twenty-four, forty-foot long steel shipping containers, each weighing in at eleven tons. Built in China and designed to be a mobile unit, PUMA City was shipped to Alicante via cargo ship at the end of August and was assembled at the entrance of the race village in just two weeks. It will be open to the general public from today until mid-October when PUMA Ocean Racing’s il mostro and the other competition boats depart for Cape Town, South Africa on the first leg of the nine month-long Volvo Ocean Race. Once the boats leave the port of Alicante, PUMA City will be dissembled and make its way across the Atlantic Ocean to await the arrival of the Volvo Ocean Race in Boston Harbor in April 2009.
“The impressive and innovative set-up of PUMA City is the perfect backdrop when il mostro sets the sails for the first route of the Volvo Ocean Race,” said PUMA Chairman and CEO Jochen Zeitz. “It’s the perfect setting, coming in the well-known inspirational and typical PUMA-style, for launching our new sailing category.”
PUMA City consists of three levels of steel shipping containers stacked on top of one another and then slightly shifted to create natural outdoor spaces with large overhangs and wide open terraces, which will be utilized for entertaining and in-port race viewing. A unique PUMA retail space on the ground floor offers a selection of the PUMA Sailing, Motorsport, Urban Mobility and PUMA Archives apparel, footwear and accessories collections. As the official supplier of Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009, the retail space on the second floor features the entire Volvo Ocean Race collection, which will be the only location where those products can be purchased in the race village. The upper container is a long, open area containing a bar, lounge and event space spilling out onto an oversized wooden deck. This area will be used for concerts, parties and other events where all race goers are welcome.
“PUMA City is a testament to PUMA’s creativity as a brand, its support of the PUMA Ocean Racing team and the commitment to the spirit of the Volvo Ocean Race,” says Antonio Bertone, PUMA CMO. “It was a lot of hard work from many people to get this huge structure to Alicante in time for the start of the race and we couldn’t be happier with the result.”
This design conception of PUMA City began in July 2007. Construction began in China in January 2008 and was completed in just eight months. The internationally acclaimed architecture office of LOT-EK designed the building as a modular system that ships as a conventional cargo container. A unique system of covering panels were designed to fully seal all of the actual structures during travel, protecting each unit from the elements while crossing the open ocean. Once the structure reached land these panels were removed and connected together forming the open interior spaces. Puma City is the first building of its kind to fully take advantage of the global shipping network already in place and at 11,000 square feet, it is the first container building of its size to be truly mobile. It is also designed to respond to all of the architectural challenges; meeting international building code, withstanding dramatic climate changes, rapid on-site assembly, and handling day-to-day operations.
”PUMA City is a fantastic example of mobile architecture featuring a dramatic cantilever, a complex weave of double height indoor and outdoor spaces, says LOT-EK architect Giuseppe Lignano. “Great colors and graphics transform a shipping container stack into a landmark on the horizon of mobile architecture.”
PUMA announced their entry into the sailing category in May 2007, when they officially entered into the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009 with the PUMA Ocean Racing Team and the PUMA il mostro, a Volvo Open 70 skippered by Ken Read. PUMA Ocean Racing’s il mostro was christened by Oscar-nominated actress Salma Hayek in a waterfront ceremony at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston at Fan Pier in May 2008.
The around the world ocean race will be making the only U.S. stop at Fan Pier in Boston, Massachusetts, the home of PUMA North America and its global marketing headquarters. The sportlifestyle brand began carrying a full line of performance and lifestyle sailing apparel, footwear and accessories in May 2008, which is available at sailing specialty stores and select PUMA Concept Stores and in PUMA City.
For more information about the race, team and the PUMA Sailing collections, please visit www.pumaoceanracing.com
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PUMA® is the global Sportlifestyle company that successfully fuses influences from sport, lifestyle and fashion. PUMA’s unique industry perspective delivers the unexpected in Sportlifestyle Footwear, Apparel and Accessories, through technical innovation and revolutionary design. Established in Herzogenaurach, Germany in 1948, PUMA distributes products in over 80 countries. For further information please visit www.puma.com