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Does it make sense for Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup? German architect Albert Speer, whose office is in charge of the project, says yes -- and is doing all he can to ensure sustainability. In a SPIEGEL interview, he says how. — spiegel.de
Related: Desert sands, soccer, sustainability and "symbolic capital"... View full entry
The owner of the St. Louis Rams plans to build an NFL stadium in Inglewood, which could pave the way for the league's return to Los Angeles...Owner Stan Kroenke, who bought 60 acres adjacent to the Forum a year ago, has joined forces with the owners of the 238-acre Hollywood Park site, Stockbridge Capital Group. They plan to add an 80,000-seat NFL stadium and 6,000-seat performance venue to the already-massive development of retail, office, hotel and residential space... — LA Times
"The announcement is the latest in more than a dozen stadium proposals that have come and gone in the meandering, two-decade effort to bring an NFL franchise back to the nation's second-largest media market. But Kroenke's move marks the first time an existing team owner has controlled a local site... View full entry
"It's like creating a contemporary cathedral in some ways [...]"
"Often the stadium is meant to become the pride of a city, a landmark object, and as such, a monument representing the latest achievements in architecture."
Since ancient Greeks built the first Olympic stadium in fine white marble, the arena has been as much about inspiring awe, as staging competition.
Today's architects must go even further.
— cnn.com
Related: Hadid and Japanese at loggerheads over ‘turtle-like’ Olympic stadium View full entry
“They don’t want a foreigner to build in Tokyo for a national stadium. On the other hand, they all have work abroad. Whether it’s Sejima, Toyo Ito, or Maki or Isozaki or Kengo Kuma.”
Last month Isozaki, 83, wrote an open letter to the Japan Sports Council, the government body in charge of plans for the 2020 Games, in which he attacked the “distorted” process that has led to “a dull, slow form”.
— theguardian.com
Previously View full entry
In a young city predisposed to wrecking and rebuilding, impressive works of architecture can sometimes be discarded as effortlessly as last year’s runway accessories.
But Miami Marine Stadium, a bold structure on Biscayne Bay that sought to jolt the city into the future back in 1963, may prove a rare, stubborn exception. Abandoned and shuttered more than two decades ago, the Modernist stadium is in the midst of a turbulent, nearly seven-year effort by a nonprofit group [...].
— nytimes.com
Related: Winners of the 2011 DawnTown Miami Floating Stage Competition View full entry
Recent Harvard Graduate School of Design graduate Yaohua Wang finished his M.Arch program on a high note by winning the 2014 James Templeton Kelley Prize for Best M.Arch II Thesis for his project, "Salvaged Stadium". Although Wang doesn't win an award every single time for his projects, his intricate ideas have spurred some debate in the past. — bustler.net
Salvaged Stadium explores the notion of finding architecture's "hidden dimension". In the introduction, Yaohua Wang writes:"Let’s begin with a joke. A man went into a restaurant, and he asked the waitress; 'Can I have a coffee without milk, please.' The waitress answers: 'Sorry we don’t have... View full entry
It was supposed to represent a dynamic future vision for Tokyo, flaring up out of the city’s Meiji Jingu park in sinuous white arcs. But Zaha Hadid’s design for the 2020 Olympic stadium [...] now facing its fiercest public attack yet. [...]
In a lengthy open letter to the Japan Sports Council [...] Isozaki rails against the “distorted” process that has led to “a dull, slow form, like a turtle waiting for Japan to sink so that it can swim away”.
— theguardian.com
Previously View full entry
It's been a long time since the Houston Oilers or any other team called the Astrodome home, and voters rejected a bond measure to adapt and reuse this domed cathedral last year. But Emmett's not giving it up. Yesterday, he led the press on a tour of the Astrodome to introduce his own plan to restore it: By creating the world's largest indoor park.
This isn't the first scheme mounted by preservationists who see a future for the dome.
— citylab.com
Previously:Winners of the Reimagine the Astrodome ideas competitionCan buildings be too young to save? View full entry
Moscow wants to make Russia the "center of the sporting world," but the price tag will be steep. Four years before the 2018 World Cup, costs are exploding in the next host country, with the two most important stadiums each costing more than a billion euros. — spiegel.de
Zaha Hadid Architects has admitted it has made changes to its design for the stadium that will be the centrepiece of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
The firm has faced hostility in Japan with critics complaining that the proposed 80,000-seat stadium is too big, too costly and clashes with Tokyo’s urban planning.
At the weekend, 500 protestors marched around the existing National Stadium to demonstrate over plans to replace it with Hadid’s proposal [...].
— bdonline.co.uk
Over the next few years, two professional sports teams are in a position to radically reshape much of the fringe of Atlanta's downtown core. [...]
Neither stadium deal has been the public relations coup that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed surely hoped for. [...]
There's an inherent messiness to these dual, competing narratives – one of downtown reinvestment, the other a triumph of the suburbs.
— theatlanticcities.com
[...] I saw a Populous stadium in Hong Kong I liked once with these two big arches. And it opened from end zone to end zone.
And so we started to go off of that particular path, opened up the ends of the building so that you could see the sea and the mountains. [...] And it developed then into what you now see as the stadium that is right there for the games.
— hereandnow.wbur.org
For more Sochi-related news posts, click here. View full entry
Fisht reproduces Cowboys signature pair of arched trusses, and shares its bulbous, hump-back shape — albeit with a wave-like articulated roof of polycarbonate. What it appears not to share, at least from the images available online, is the sensitive way Cowboys Stadium hits the ground, slanting in to minimize its bulk. Fisht is a lot more ham-fisted, flaring out and surrounded by all manner of circulatory junk. — artsblog.dallasnews.com
Cowboys Stadium View full entry
Olympic stadiums are nothing new for Populous, the global practice known for designing some of the world's iconic sports venues. With the Sochi Winter Olympics a few days away, we'll give a little headstart with a glimpse into Fisht Olympic Stadium -- which Populous was selected to design in 2009 -- before it makes its debut at the Opening Ceremony. — bustler.net
For more details, head over to Bustler. View full entry
Less than five months before Brazil's World Cup kicks off, 6 out of 12 venues are still unfinished -- including a complex in the northern city of Manaus, where construction workers have died and pay for laborers is an issue. Fifa has warned Brazil's World Cup 2014 host city of Curitiba that it could be excluded unless work speeds up. — marketplace.org
Previously: Three killed after partial stadium collapse at 2014 World Cup venue View full entry