World Cup 2022.. Architectural paintings host football fans in Qatar
The world's regular sports competitions are no longer just about sports, and I'm not referring to video game competitions here, but to the race that begins and rages before any of these events.
This race begins a few years before the competitions even begin, and ends a few months before they begin. Not only is it an opportunity to build a large-scale building, it also provides a free world-class publicity opportunity for the building designer.
Sometimes competitions go beyond competition and turn into a struggle, as in the case of the design conflict of Japan's National Stadium.
In 2012, the Olympic Committee of Japan announced an architectural competition to redesign the stadium in order to prepare it to host the Olympic Games that were held in Tokyo in 2020.
This English architectural competition, of Iraqi origin, was won by Zaha Hadid, but a number of Japanese architects who reached the age of fame submitted objections to the result, and to the inappropriateness of the design to the urban and historical context of the city, and demanded the cancellation of the result and the establishment of a new competition, which is what caused Zaha Hadid's revolution, She accused them of canceling the project because of Japan's desire that the building designer be Japanese.
The legal struggle lasted for years until Japan triumphed and actually scrapped the building, setting up a new competition in which a Japanese designer won.
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English-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid designed Al Janoub Stadium |
As you have noticed, dear reader, designing a building as a stadium to host a world sports championship is a big deal, even for the most famous celebrities in the field of architectural design. In any case, the World Cup hosted by the State of Qatar this year did not face any of these problems, and Qatar succeeded in attracting a number of international designers to design these buildings. You will find a lot of culture and art surrounding the event.
Lusail Stadium.. Giants of sports architecture make the final miracle
Lusail Stadium, as its name suggests, is located in the city of Lusail, and it was designed by the world's most famous design office "Foster + partners". The result of the simple lines in the design, the luster resulting from the use of glossy glass, and the shape of the building that suggests its light weight, contrary to the truth of course.
For this reason, we note that the "Apple" technology company always resorts to "Sir Foster" to design its distinctive branches around the world, in addition to the company's headquarters, which opened in 2017.
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| Lusail Stadium, which will host the final match of the World Cup |
In the same vein, the design of Lusail Stadium, which used the usual materials preferred by “Foster”, but those familiar with the field of architectural design know that the “Foster” office is concerned with buildings of an administrative nature (such as Doha Tower, for example), and they do not have much experience in designing sports buildings, For this reason, they collaborated with the English office "Popioulas" specialized in the design of sports buildings, and the American office "Manica" for its owner "David Manica" with a long history of working on sports buildings.
It is planned that the building will host the final match of the FIFA World Cup for several reasons, including that it is the largest stadium among the eight stadiums that will host the tournament, as it contains 80,000 seats, but this huge number of seats - which is not commensurate with the population of the State of Qatar - It is not a fixed number, as the design takes into account that half of this number will be dismantled after the end of the tournament, in addition to that, many parts of the building will be dismantled until its size becomes smaller and more suitable for the context of the State of Qatar and Lusail City.
The design is to use these parts, which will be dismantled, to be reused in the construction of social and commercial areas surrounding the stadium site itself.
Al-Bayt Stadium.. An opening match in the spirit of the tent of Arab poetry
In contrast to Lusail Stadium, which will host the last match in the tournament, Al Bayt Stadium will host the opening match of the World Cup, in which Qatar will naturally participate as the host country.
The building was designed by Dar Al-Handasah, and Dar Al-Handasah is not an architectural design company in the first place, but rather an infrastructure and construction company, and with the success of the company's business, it opened a special department for architectural designs. We say this because the architectural design needs a design culture that is reflected in the management of companies. The company that starts as a design office and then includes engineering departments, its management style and work environment are radically different from the opposite.
The company has resorted to a design inspired by the ancient Arab Bedouin tents, but mimicking the shape of these tents directly is certainly not a deep idea. This detail will be a bit technical, but it is important for understanding how buildings work in general.
Flexible travel system.. Bedouin roof suitable for homes in the Arabian Peninsula
The biggest and perhaps the only challenge in any building is the roof because it is the element that resists the greatest influence of gravity.
Most buildings rely on one of two technologies; The structural system that uses columns and connects them using beams, or the system of using domes and vaults, and in both cases we rely on solid units that support each other.
These systems provide buildings with high rigidity and great endurance capabilities, and the Pharaonic temples in Egypt are not far from us, which are still steadfast until now, but the ancient Egyptians established a central metropolis, in contrast to the lifestyle that characterized many of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, which is a pattern Continuous wandering.
Travelers do not like solid buildings, but prefer lightweight buildings that can be installed, carried and moved, and the most appropriate system for these requirements is the suspension system, meaning that the roof of the tent does not use solid materials, but on the contrary it uses flexible materials, and these materials are suspended from a point specific or a number of different points.
This system is used in the design of many bridges around the world, and it was developed in particular by the late German architect "Frei Otto", and there is no evidence for that from the West German headquarters at the Montreal International Fair in 1967.
We note that the design creativity in the playground of the house is somewhat poor, in contrast to the technical creativity in it, which is appropriate to the nature of the company’s work as we mentioned before, the roof of the building can be completely moved to control the light and shade, and then the temperatures inside the building, and the building has a number of A large number of international certificates that prove the efficiency of its ecological design.
Stadium 974..a metal structure made of transport containers
Stadium 974 is located in the Ras Abu Aboud area, which is why it was called by this name first before it was called Stadium 974, for reasons related to its design, which I will mention later.
This stadium was designed by the Spanish office "Fenwick Iribarin", and is located in an area characterized by being a port and an industrial area, which prompted the office to use shipping containers as a building unit, meaning that the building is a metal structure designed so that its function is to carry 974 containers of transport containers, and this number This is the reason behind the new name of the building.
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| Stadium 974, which consists of 974 containers of transport containers, and the number also symbolizes the telephone code for Qatar |
These containers contain different parts of the building’s functions. Some of them contain the so-called complementary spaces, which are the elements that include stores, bathrooms and other spaces that are not at the core of the building’s function, but are necessary for the building’s work to be completed.
Most importantly, the design of the industrial building helps to dismantle and install it almost completely, and it is planned that a large part of the building will be dismantled after the end of the tournament and donated to countries that need these supplies in the development of their infrastructure.
Recycling.. The first dismantling stadium in FIFA history
This building is considered the first temporary building in the history of FIFA, and we must point out that resorting to this strategy is a very courageous decision by the decision maker, as countries usually resort to building the largest and greatest they can, then the tournament ends after a short time, and the building remains standing As an underutilized ghost building, its maintenance costs more than the income it is able to provide.
It is also interesting that the use of transport containers in construction was a popular trend in the world when the design of this building was announced, but this trend did not last long for various reasons, and fortunately, interest in containers around the world is again due to reasons not related to architectural design.
The world is going through a major container crisis resulting from the Corona pandemic, as many countries have a surplus of these containers without having any idea how to address this crisis, and this stadium will provide at the perfect time a model that can be inspired in other buildings around the world.
Al Janoub Stadium.. Inspiration of traditional pearl collecting boats
Al-Janoub Stadium was named after Al-Wakrah Stadium first, in relation to the city of Al-Wakrah in which it is located, but its name was later changed to Al-Janoub Stadium, which was designed by the late Englishman of Iraqi origin, Zaha Hadid, and is characterized by a retractable roof, as is the case with Al-Bayt Stadium, but what distinguishes the roof The building is strikingly streamlined.
Zaha Hadid uses flowing lines in her designs almost always, and this stadium is not different from the rest of her buildings in this aspect, but it is different on the other hand, which is her use of wood in her interior design, and the reason for mixing the new futuristic style (neo-futurism) of the ceiling with the use of Warm flooring materials like wood are her attempts to achieve the traditional boat feel that characterizes Qatar.
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| South Stadium designed by architect Zaha Hadid and inspired by traditional pearl collecting boats |
The people of Qatar have historically worked in collecting pearls from the waters of the Arabian Gulf, using wooden boats with white sails, and Zaha Hadid saw in this mixture between the white color and the flowing shape of the sail with the body of the wooden boat an unfamiliar combination, as if it was a rational attempt to mix two different times. .
This stadium contains forty thousand seats, but this number will be reduced to twenty thousand only after the end of the tournament, as is the case with the rest of the stadiums, and this stadium will host 7 matches from the World Cup matches, but it is likely that it will be the main stadium to host the Qatar Stars League in the future after Reducing the number of seats.
Qatar.. The journey of the first country in the Middle East to host the World Cup
Qatar has become the first Muslim country in history to host the FIFA World Cup, as well as the first country in the Middle East to host this tournament, which is a well-deserved position. Qatar owns the famous beIN Sports network around the world. Then it would be unwise for the country to content itself with offering tournaments without trying to host them.
Despite the country's poverty in terms of sports services and equipment at the time of its request to host the tournament, it succeeded in a relatively short time in establishing a large number of high-quality sports equipment, and it has attracted a good number of international and local designers to design the World Cup stadiums, which is just a part From the whole picture of hosting the tournament, but rather the smallest part in fact, because hosting this event requires infrastructure for housing players, their coaches and representatives of their countries, in addition to stadiums for training before the matches, and these stadiums must be secured and confidential so that plans are not revealed before the matches take place.
In addition to all this, the country must also have a qualified public transportation system to host the huge number of spectators waiting. Qatar has worked on all these axes in parallel and achieved good success in all of them, and the buildings that I have presented in this article are only four of the eight stadiums that will host the events of the tournament.