The 2022 FIFA World Cup was mired in controversy. Human rights groups saw Qatar’s hosting of the event as an affront to the LGBTQ+ community, free speech, and ethical labor practices. Ethics and standards groups investigated whether Qatar had ‘bought’ the event following rumours of bribery. Fans and sporting bodies alike even questioned the timing of the event, and its interference with domestic league calendars.
While these concerns targeted at Qatar at the 2022 World Cup specifically, the event was also a catalyst for environmental groups to ask broader questions about the carbon cost of major temporary sports and cultural events, and whether they can be justified by long-term economic or social benefits. These questions are not new or bespoke to Qatar; they also formed the basis for our feature articles on both Expo 2020 Dubai and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
For WilkinsonEyre’s Sports and Leisure Leader Sam Wright, whose team has delivered an abundance of major sports projects, including for multiple Olympic Games, the questions speak to a wider conversation on the role of sports infrastructure in cities, their longevity and resilience, and their material composition.
At the 2022 World Architecture Festival in December, as the Qatar World Cup was underway, Archinect’s Niall Patrick Walsh sat down with Wright to explore these topics in more detail. The conversation was also a moment to reflect on WilkinsonEyre’s practice and culture more broadly, one year after the passing of the firm’s founder Chris Wilkinson at the age of 76.
Niall Patrick Walsh: Let’s begin by discussing where we are, at the 2022 World Architecture Festival in Lisbon, Portugal. What have your overall thoughts been on this edition of WAF?
Sam Wright: Firstly, it is refreshing to be back at this event in-person, after the digital-only events of the past two years. As architects, we thrive on dialogue, debate, and simply meeting our peers. For me, the intellectual exchange allowed by these events is stimulating from a creativity standpoint, especially when you add the international element that WAF accommodates. I also enjoy watching people presenting their work and seeing how various cultures around the world display different nuances or focuses.
Earlier, on the festival floor, I saw RIBA President Simon Allford give a 10 minute presentation at one stage where he was in ‘presenter mode’ before he rushed straight to a crit room to be in ‘judge mode.’ It is an event where you can have senior figures in practice such as Allford and yourself moving between different roles.
This is true. For architects like myself who have been practicing for 35 years, we spend a great deal of time presenting our work but do not often take the time studying how others convey ideas. The critical debate which takes place after WAF presentations is also useful. Typically, in our everyday capacity, we are asked technical, descriptive questions of our work. To instead be intellectually challenged about our work is healthy, since when we get to a certain level in our career, we can feel immune to those debates or discussions. When we aren’t in an environment as conducive to dialogue as this, we can be slightly standoffish as a profession.
The key to a successful design festival is giving people the chance to decompress, engage with each other, share ideas, and learn from each other in an inspirational setting. You’re never going to get that online.
As you mentioned, many design events moved online during the pandemic. It was an interesting moment to step back and ask “what is the role of these physical, geographically-anchored events in the architectural calendar?” We have WAF, we have Biennales in Venice, Shenzhen, and elsewhere, and grassroots events such as Open House. Much of the day-to-day of being an architect is spent in design studios and on construction sites, but every-so-often we have these escapes. Do you ever reflect on what role these events have in design culture?
We all live in such as a pressurizing environment in our profession. Events such as these are a good moment to decompress. Finding the appropriate physical location is also important. Here, at Parque das Nações in Lisbon, you can see the amazing regeneration that has occurred in this area since the 1990s. For architects, it is an illustration of the art of the possible; an environment of exhibition centers and arenas that after Expo ’98 has become a popular commercial and residential district.
Any kind of rich urban fabric is always going to be stimulating for architects. The key to a successful design festival is giving people the chance to decompress, engage with each other, share ideas, and learn from each other in an inspirational setting. You’re never going to get that online.
Moving on to WilkinsonEyre, could you give us an overview of where the firm as it stands in 2022?
As a practice, we have 160 in London, and a mature office of about 20 people in Hong Kong. We just started an office in Sydney off the back of a major project we just completed there, and are just entering the detail design stage for another commission in Melbourne. We recognize that we need to keep to our core strengths; commercial office work, infrastructure, culture and sports, education projects, residential schemes; we keep pushing the boundaries of those typologies. We are also aware that as a practice, you need to grow to survive. Happily, we are a healthy office with a rich, young, international mix. That gives us a certain energy.
It is always challenging when the founding partner passes away. It did however give us a moment to think about not just his legacy, but our collective legacy as a practice.
2022 has also been a hard year for us after the death of our founder Chris Wilkinson one year ago. We had been planning this succession for some time, but it is always challenging when the founding partner passes away. It did however give us a moment to think about not just his legacy, but our collective legacy as a practice. It has reinforced our core values: the integration of arts and architecture, structural expression, delicacy, and lightness. Amid the sadness of Chris’ passing, 2022 saw strong moments for us. Most notably, we just opened Battersea Power Station, a major reactivation project that brings together many of the key themes in our work, including transformation, regeneration, inventiveness, and structural ingenuity. For us, it was a moment of showcase.
It’s one of the only things that unites almost every practice, isn’t it: those who founded the firm will ultimately either retire or pass away, and a 'changing of the guard' takes place. There is also this balance between recognizing what brought you as a firm to where you are at the moment, but also not becoming repetitive or emulative.
In the British context, we saw that starkly at the turn of the millennium. We saw a new generation of architects who were raised in the studios of Foster, Rogers, Grimshaw, Hopkins, etc during the commissioning of the millennium projects. Many of these architects went on to create strong design houses through the 2000s. In our case, many of the staff at the moment did their apprenticeships at WilkinsonEyre, and all embody the ethos the Chris established. Even now, a WilkinsonEyre project is still fundamentally a WilkinsonEyre project, even after the founder passes away.
Is it challenging to ensure that over 180 people understand that ethos, and what it means to be a WilkinsonEyre project?
It’s engrained in the practice, but it helps that the 180 people are operating across different typologies that all have their own nuances. The overall theme of our projects are still the same: something that engages the senses, that is intelligent. We try to avoid skin-deep beauty, or arbitrary work. There has to be a logic; a structural logic, engineered logic, a respect for nature, and a strive towards delicacy and lightness. That carries through whether it’s a bridge, or a school, or a stadium.
Right, it’s about an awareness of similar principles across diverse typologies, even if they end up manifesting in different ways.
Yes, I think so. For example, we recently held an internal review of past projects, and we reflected back on the Guangzhou International Finance Center. At the time of its completion, it was the tallest building in the world by a British architect, and the sixth tallest in the world. If you look at it now, twelve years later, it still has this elegance and beauty. The underlying concept of a structural diagrid with a central core gave the scheme a strong efficiency, but also gave it an elegance and a rhythm. Even today, it hasn’t aged; it has an inherent beauty derived from rigour.
As you lead WilkinsonEyre’s sports and leisure team, it is a good time to talk to you. The FIFA 2022 World Cup is taking place at the moment in Qatar, and has attracted controversy from different angles such as LGBTQ+ rights, free speech, and labor rights. I want to ask you specifically about the climate critique of the event. The BBC recently interviewed carbon researcher Mike Berners-Lee, who claimed that this year’s World Cup would be the single biggest human carbon event in history apart from wars.
From a sustainability point of view, do you think it is possible to construct a piece of sports architecture such as a stadium or an arena in a sustainable manner, even a genuinely carbon-neutral way, or is there something inherently difficult about that typology?
The difference between a stadium and many other typologies such as a commercial office or a school is its intermittent use. Operational carbon is actually quite low in a stadium, as they do not see use for twenty four hours per day, seven days per week. The proportion of structural and civil works to the rest of the envelope or fit-out in a stadium is also quite disproportionate when compared to other typologies. As a result, there is an enormous share of embodied carbon in stadiums, given that the energy in-use is lower.
We should be pushing sports venues which are designed to develop organically over time, rather than demolishing and reconstructing major elements every few decades at a considerable carbon cost.
A key environmental aspect for a stadium, indeed for most projects, is longevity. We pride ourselves on the repurposing and reactivation projects we’ve been doing in London, but the fact that we are repurposing buildings constructed in the 1990s gives us pause for thought. Why was the quality of design in the 1990s, many of which was by competent architects, not robust enough? Across our cities, many projects seem to be revisited and significantly revised after only a few decades.
Sports architecture is different. At Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, we made interventions to a simple structure that was 30 years old, but when you look around the main grounds, the sports stadium and fabric are over 100 years old. We should be pushing sports venues which are designed to develop organically over time, rather than demolishing and reconstructing major elements every few decades at a considerable carbon cost.
Beyond the longevity of the architecture, we need to consider the longevity of sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup. What is the true legacy of Qatar 2022? Everybody knows the country doesn’t need eight World Cup-capable stadiums. The country itself only supported a small fraction of the visiting spectators, with many staying in surrounding countries and flying into Qatar on match days. Clearly they don’t have the future need for this infrastructure.
The climate impact of Qatar has indeed been a disaster, but we equally have to step back and ask why FIFA made the decision to award the commission to Qatar in the first place.
From a sustainability and community standpoint, it would have been far more beneficial had Qatar simply constructed one stadium which would remain relevant to its community beyond the event, and instead share the World Cup with other nations. Today, a majority of nations across the world, including developing countries, have extensive existing sports infrastructure. Take the Africa Cup of Nations, for example, where the amount of stadium infrastructure constructed across the continent over the past two decades has created a critical mass of quality stadiums. The next Africa Cup of Nations could be shared across regions of the continent, similar to how Euro 2020 was planned.
The next edition of the FIFA World Cup could set an important precedent for this, being shared across Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The climate impact of Qatar has indeed been a disaster, but we equally have to step back and ask why FIFA made the decision to award the commission to Qatar in the first place. It was clearly misinformed, but it was 12 years ago; this is when the climate damage was done. Clearly the current FIFA World Cup format is not sustainable.
Beyond careful planning, the future of sports architecture is also about being intelligent with materiality. We are often surveying the product landscape, asking if we can source low-carbon concrete, or greener steel. We see material innovation on a constant basis now, so I have confidence that the technology for greener materials will continue to catch up.
The unsustainable stadiums are the ones that have no potential to grow, and end up being carved up or torn down in short time.
As architects we are often tied down in legislation, in what clients are driving us to deliver. We can only respond by developing the most efficient and adaptable structural frames allowable, and to always ask how these structures can evolve over time. The unsustainable stadiums are the ones that have no potential to grow, and end up being carved up or torn down in short time. For this to work, the client, and crucially the insurance markets, all have to be onboard. As architects involved in these discussions, it can be difficult to force change from the bottom. At some point, legislation has to force you to do it. Until you get to that point, you are relying on a well-informed, aspirational client, and an aspirational design team to help drive that.
There is a whole education process that is needed, even within the general public, of the impact of buildings on climate change.
We also desperately need to be more clear and demonstrative of what we mean by ‘green’ design. Too many people think ‘green’ is a visual component. As an architect, you could deliver a highly material-efficient, low-energy commercial office building only for a developer to ask “well, where is the green?” When you explain the building’s embodied or operational carbon credentials, the developer might still say “yes, but I want some green!” They equate biophilia with sustainability. There is a whole education process that is needed, even within the general public, of the impact of buildings on climate change.
This education, and the grassroots pressure it spawns, might be key to bringing that top-down legislative change you mentioned earlier. Maybe in the future it won’t be as easy for bodies such as FIFA to award major sporting events in a careless way without immediate backlash. We could more effectively avoid the situation we have in Qatar now, where as you say, the stadiums are already built and those heavy embodied carbon emissions are already locked into the equation.
Exactly. That’s not to say design also doesn’t play a part. The traditional doughnut-shaped arena that we associate with sports stadiums might work well in an isolated car park in California, but I think contextual design is vitally important. It gets to the heart of how a community embraces a building, and ensures the structure isn’t just a standalone edifice for spectators every fortnight. We need to ask: Where is the community benefit? Can you be inventive? Can you integrate commerce, education, even medical uses? At the moment, too many stadiums bring down the shutters after the final kick.
We talked about concrete and steel. I’m curious about timber, since we don’t see many timber stadiums. Is that a force of regulation, insurance, technology, or something else?
We do look at this closely, and when we open our projects up to awards, we are asked “why not timber?” At Lord’s Cricket Ground, for example, we needed to create a column-free environment in order to create unobstructed views. Your structure is therefore doing a lot of work, especially with a cantilevered element. At the moment, timber will not give us the dynamics in the primary frame that we want.
The other issue in sports buildings is the insurance market; they remain incredibly nervous about the use of timber. That said, we are keen to promote it, and we talk to clients about it even in secondary structural elements. But the financial implications from the insurance markets means that even in commercial buildings, integrating timber soffits and wall linings can be difficult. It’s the biggest hurdle for integrating timber into our built fabric.
Niall Patrick Walsh is an architect and journalist, living in Belfast, Ireland. He writes feature articles for Archinect and leads the Archinect In-Depth series. He is also a licensed architect in the UK and Ireland, having previously worked at BDP, one of the largest design + ...
3 Comments
I've been questioning the value of these design spectacles for international sporting events since Beijing 2008. It seems each new event is worse than the last (perhaps london, tokyo, to a lesser degree). There are many places that have the necessary facilities to host these events with little to no new construction required, but then we wouldn't be able to prop up fascists and get rich off the graft associated with these propaganda shows. Sadly the architecture profession can not help itself from abstaining from these farces, I guess we love the taste of boots too much.
I agree with you. It is not fascism unless capitalism has changed color and boots and turned into one!
Qatar, Russia, China, (Greece & Brazil, to a lesser degree) all could be considered fascist: Authoritarian, Nationalistic, Repressive, etc. All attempt or have attempted to use events like the Olympics / World Cup as state propaganda. The U.S., and Europe have fascist elements (Trump, Le Pen, Berlusconi, etc.), but they have so far failed to silence descent. While we as architects have limited political power, we can choose who we accept work from, and should be held to account when we are complicit with dictators and despots.
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