Archinect - News

Zaha Hadid Architects designs 'stratified, geological' sports complex in Hangzhou, China

2022-10-27T11:58:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects has unveiled their competition-winning design for the Hangzhou International Sports Center in China. The complex will be anchored by a 60,000-seat football stadium, while also holding a 19,000-seat indoor arena, an aquatics center with two 164-foot-long pools, and practice pitches.

Image credit: Brick Visual

The 1.45 million-square-foot stadium is connected to the indoor arena and aquatics center via a central podium. Inspired by tea farms on Hangzhou’s surrounding hillsides, the weaving, terracing podium also houses the sport center’s ancillary facilities including training and fitness halls, locker rooms, shops, offices, restaurants, and cafes.

Image credit: Plomp

The louvered façade of the main stadium seeks to become more porous than traditional solid stadiums, while the configuration of the seating bowl aims to bring spectators “as close as possible” to the field of play, creating what the design team calls an “intense matchday atmosphere for players on the ...

MAD Architects unveils design for 2024 Paris Olympics' Aquatic Center

2020-07-20T18:37:00-04:00

MAD Architects, led by Ma Yansong has been selected along with French architectural firms, Jacques Rougerie Architecture, Atelier Phileas Architecture, and Apma Architecture to design the Aquatic Center for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Located in the Saint-Denis district of Paris, the design team's concept envisions the Aquatic Center as a piece of a public artwork. Aesthetically, the facility flaunts a translucent curved facade that appears to be floating, giving the structure a sense of lightness with a rippled reflexive effect. The building is expected to hold 5,000 spectators during the Olympics, and has been designed to reduce in size by 50 percent once the games are over.

70 percent of the structure is constructed from wood, aligning with the 2024 Paris Olympics' environmental protection considerations and sustainable development. The facility also uses solar panels to reduce light and energy consumption; rainwater collection systems also recycle water to irrigate the landscaping ...

Selling residents on a water park during a drought

2015-08-18T12:40:00-04:00

Dublin is building a water park — in the middle of the worst drought in California’s modern history. [...] “It just looks bad, frankly ... It looks like we are out there thinking, ‘Let’s just go out there and build a water park,’ when the rest of the state is suffering.” [...] “Even if the drought weren’t to end,” said Lori Taylor, a spokeswoman for the city, “there will be a need for places where kids need to learn how to swim.”

'It's like swimming in a spaceship': Zaha Hadid's Aquatics Centre opens to public

2014-02-25T17:24:00-05:00

Flaring its muscular grey wings like a stingray leaping out of the river Lea, the Aquatics Centre was planned as the showpiece of the London 2012 Olympic Games, a piece of liquid drama designed by the country's most celebrated queen of the curve, Zaha Hadid. [...] "I didn't mind the seating stands so much," shrugs Hadid, sitting poolside beneath the bulging belly of her building, which finally opens to the public on Saturday.

Diving ticket-holders informed of obstructed views in Zaha-designed Aquatics Centre

2012-07-26T14:01:00-04:00

The 600 seats in question only concern 10-meter platform events, which start Monday. Small portions of the dives may not be visible. The Zaha Hadid-designed Aquatics Centre features a dipping roof that limits viewing from the highest seats.

Lebbeus Woods on Zaha Hadid’s Aquatic Center

2012-02-16T23:40:00-05:00

... one the most gifted architects of my time has been reduced to wrapping such conventional programs of use in merely expressionistic forms, without letting a single ray of her genius illuminate the human condition. Am I being pretentious and overly demanding? Of course. But that’s the way disappointed lovers behave. Exaggerated emotions. Absurd demands. Anger that transgresses all reason. She has let me down, and what makes it worse is that she apparently couldn’t care less.