Populous   Saudi Arabia   The masterplan drawn up by Populous for Riyadh has been unveiled. It includes King Salman Stadium, which, seating 92,000, will be among the world’s largest sports arenas. Programmed for completion late in 2029, it will be the primary headquarters of

3XN CL MAP   Germany   A sports facility in Munich, close to the Olympic Stadium designed by Frei Otto and Günther Behnisch, was recently inaugurated. Named SAP Garden and located on the site of the old velodrome, it is the new home of the EHC Red Bull ice hockey team and

L35 Architects gmp Architekten Ribas & Ribas   Spain   The main objective of the renovation was to give Real Madrid’s stadium more flexible and dynamic, readjusting its massive form to the scale of the city around it. The asymmetrical envelope flows with curved surfaces to reflect the diffused light in a

Populous Oualalou + Choi   Morocco   In the Moroccan town of El Mansouria, 38 kilometers north of Casablanca, the 115,000-capacity Grand Stade Hassan II will be one of the largest football stadiums in the world and one of the new ones built for the World Cup of 2030, to be hosted jointl

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   United States   The firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) – in collaboration with HNTB – has won the competition to build a baseball stadium in Las Vegas on a 3.6-hectare site on Las Vegas Boulevard, between Tropicana and Reno Boulevards. It will be the new home of the Ath

Zaha Hadid Architects   Denmark   The team formed by Zaha Hadid Architects, Sweco, and Tredje Natur has won the competition to build a new football stadium in Aarhus, Denmark. The current stadium, which opened in 1920, does not meet the standards required for it to host first-tier pr

Fenwick Iribarren Architects   Qatar   With its facade showing Islamic patterns and a form that makes one think of a garment commonly worn by young Qataris, the new sport arena oozes with vernacular culture. The rhombic pieces of fiberglass that form the facade and roof create translucent

MAD Architects   China   The Beijing-based firm of Ma Yangson, MAD Architects, was commissioned to build the Quzhou Sports Park, a complex spanning almost 700,000 square meters, in the city of Zhejiang. Surrounded by trees, the facilities – including a swimming pool and a ho

Foster + Partners Norman Foster   Qatar   Lusail Stadium, centerpiece of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, officially opened on 9 September with the Lusail Super Cup final between the winners of the professional leagues of Saudi Arabia and Egypt – Al Hilal SFC and Zamalek, respectively. Designed by F

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The stadium of Basel’s local football team, originally designed by Herzog & de Meuron and completed in 2002, will be renovated by the same Swiss firm. In the refurbishment project, photovoltaic panels replace the translucent bulging plastic eleme

MAD Architects   China   The idea of nature in the east – connected to the cultivation of the spirit – gives rise to the concept of city committed to the emotional well-being of its dwellers. True to this premise, the Beijing-based studio of Ma Yansong proposes a sports park

Fenwick Iribarren Architects   Qatar   Since their invention and standardization in the mid-20th century, metallic containers have optimized shipping transportation, ushering in a new era of global logistics and commercial exchange. Later on, new approaches to architectural seriation and

David Chipperfield Architects Arup Associates   Italy   Part of a whole revamp of Santa Giulia – a former industrial zone located a few kilometers from downtown Milan – based on a masterplan drawn up by Foster+Partners, this new stadium for sport and culture events was designed by David Chipperfield Archi

Populous   Italy   The football clubs Inter Milan and AC Milan have announced that Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, commonly known as the San Siro, will be replaced by a stadium designed by Populous. Named ‘The Cathedral,’ the design draws inspiration from two of Milan’s major

MAD Architects   China   The sports facilities blend into a public park whose design will attract citizens to practicing exercise. Facades disappear into the terrain, covered by greenery, and contours are engraved into the surface, some forming pedestrian pathways.

Zaha Hadid Architects   China   Taking in 60,000 spectators, the stadium rises within the orthogonal grid of the new Fengdong business district of Xi’an, the city that is hosting the 2023 championship of the Asian Football Confederation. With new civic spaces and facilities for spo

Estudio Cano Lasso    Spain   The classics believed that places have memory, and that their own character is custodied by a protecting spirit, the ‘genius loci.’ The Vallehermoso Athletics Stadium in Madrid is an example, a place that has gone through many phases. It was here, in

El Equipo Mazzanti   Colombia   Built in 1935 for the National Games of Colombia, the Romelio Martínez Stadium stands on a site initially intended for baseball and later used as a football field for the neighborhood. Over these spaces rose the stadium and what was called the ‘shade

Mecanoo   Luxembourg   Factors like the features of the site and budget determined the compact design in which the manipulation of the topography rationalizes the complex program. The skylights and the glazed facade bring in sunlight and frame the views... [+]

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Located between the gardens of the Meiji Shrine – a Shinto sanctuary – and the Imperial Palace, in the heart of Tokyo, the new National Stadium contributes to preserving the natural environment of this historical area through restraint in size and th

Zaha Hadid Architects   Qatar   The coastal city of Al Wakrah, 20 kilometers south of Doha, has inaugurated the building designed by Zaha Hadid Architects – in collaboration with the engineering firm Aecom – which will be one of the venues of the FIFA World Cup of 2022. Among the n

Barceló Balanzó Arquitectes AIA Activitats Arquitectòniques   Spain   In the year 2011, Tarragona was chosen as the host city for the 18th edition of the Mediterranean Games. Located in the new olympic ring west of the city, the Palau d’Esports Catalunya – with capacity for 5.000 spectators – was one of the main venues

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Netherlands   Seating 63,000 spectators, the new stadium of the football club Feyenoord Rotterdam will be the largest in the Netherlands. The project led by David Gianotten – with Kees van Casteren and Shinji Takagi – of the Dutch firm OMA draws inspiration from t

Ever since 1953 the scene of the derbies that tend to paralyze the city, the Stadio Olimpico will soon cease to be the home of Rome’s two rival sports clubs. Coinciding with its centenary, what is nicknamed I Giallorossi shall be leaving the house to

Among all the Latin expressions that keep giving form to our languages, there is one in particular that has not lost an iota of applicability: panem et circenses. Coined by the poet Juvenal in referring to the peculiar political system of ancient Rom

The opening ceremony for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo has taken place in the Japan National Stadium, a work of Kengo Kuma, which presents a sophisticated composition of timber trusses and vegetation in its galleries. Sport events mark our everyday

Japan’s leading independent architectural practice, Nikken Sekkei, in collaboration with the local firm Joan Pascual i Ramon Ausió Arquitectes, has won the competition for the new arena of Futbol Club Barcelona, which will maintain the structure of C

Among the new quarries that Spanish architects are looking to for the obtainment of new commissions, Africa is still the least exploited. Because of this, the success that some pioneering firms have garnered there is newsworthy and cause for celebrat

Jesús San Vicente   The oldest stadium known about was the one at Olympia, venue of the first Olympic Games of history, held in the year 776 BC. In Rome, the most important one was the Coliseum (or Flavian Amphitheater), where gladiators were torn apart by beasts. In 80

In the wake of the shelving of Zaha Hadid’s project, the Japan Sports Council organized a second competition for the design of the new Tokyo National Olympic Stadium in the Shinjuku ward of the capital, and the winner was the Japanese architect Kengo

The Swiss partnership Herzog & de Meuron has been commissioned to build the new stadium of London’s Chelsea Football Club. The sport facility, which is to replace the current Stamford Bridge Stadium on the same spot in the British capital, will h

The design of the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid for the New National Stadium in Tokyo was one of the strong points of the Japanese capital’s bid to host the Olympic Games of the year 2020, which it won over Istanbul and Madrid. But two years lat

Few architectural types have evolved as little, in the course of history, as stadiums have. When certain sporting activities began to become mass phenomena early in the 20th century, the answer was to erect buildings which to a great extent were simp

With the various grandstands put in place at the last minute, construction workers still gathering and packing up their tools, and lingering echoes of the all-year demonstrations against the US$15 billion investment on an event that a large number of

It is no easy task to urbanize the desert, but globalization has shown that nothing is impossible. The question is at what cost, although the various regimes of the Gulf do not seem to worry about it. For them, ‘development’ is simply ‘managed’, hid

Real Madrid finally has its icon. This time the club’s much-awaited new star is the stadium that after a long, two-phased competition full of twists and turns has been commissioned to the team formed by GMP Architekten, L-35, and Ribas & Ribas, perha

La propuesta de Zaha Hadid ha sido finalmente la seleccionada en el concurso para construir en Tokio el nuevo Estadio Nacional de Japón. Concebido con el lenguaje recurrente de su autora, el proyecto (abajo) ha sido preferido a los presentados por lo

Aunque el concurso todavía no se ha fallado, se conocen ya las cuatro propuestas para la reforma del Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, proyectadas por arquitectos que, habida cuenta del encargo, no podían ser sino ‘galácticos’.

La nómina de grandes estadios proyectados por GMP (Von Gerkan, Marg und Partner), iniciada con la reforma del olímpico de Berlín en 2004 (véase Arquitectura Viva 106) y engrosada con los de Ciudad del Cabo y Puerto Elizabeth para la Copa del Mundo de

On December 5, the project for the new Atlético de Madrid stadium, designed by the Sevillian firm Cruz y Ortiz, was presented. It will be the result of the expansion and improvement of the existing La Peineta municipal stadium. The main requirements

La ‘gran elegancia’ de su arquitectura ha sido, según el alcalde de Burdeos, lo que ha seducido al jurado del concurso para el estadio Girondins en el proyecto de Herzog & de Meuron, que además cumple otros requisitos como la eficiencia energética y

Después del éxito de Sudáfrica 2010 —donde la selección española se alzó con la Copa Mundial de Fútbol— y a la espera de que Brasil cumpla con las expectativas puestas para 2014, el Comité Ejecutivo de la FIFA ha elegido ya dónde tendrán lugar los ca

Henning Rasmuss   De los diez estadios que han sido escenario de los partidos del campeonato mundial de fútbol destacan los construidos en cuatro de las más importantes ciudades sudafricanas.

RFA Fenwick Iribarren Architects, estudio dirigido por Mark Fenwick y el español Javier Iribarren ha ganado el concurso por invitación para el proyecto del nuevo Estadio Nacional de Fútbol de Noruega. La propuesta, con una capacidad para 55.000 espec

Los croatas Njiric arhitekti construirán el nuevo Estadio Nacional de Zagreb, según el proyecto ganado recientemente en concurso. El equipamiento para el deporte y la cultura se asemeja a un volcán más que un edificio. El estadio está construido co