Zaha Hadid Architects "has beaten Glenn Howells Architects to win the contest to design a new sustainable stadium" for fifth-tier Forest Green Rovers football club in Gloucestershire, according to the Richard Waite of the ARCHITECTS' JOURNAL.
The 5,000-seat "carbon-neutral scheme for the ambitious all-vegan club will be built entirely from wood" -- a world first for a football ground.
The stadium "will be the centrepiece" of a planned £100M ($125M) Eco Park next to junction 13 of the M5, straddling the A419 heading into Stroud. The practice, which is also designing one of the five stadiums for the next World Cup in Qatar, said that "its concept combined ‘the latest material research and construction techniques with new design approaches to [create] a more ecologically sustainable and inclusive architecture.'" Zaha Hadid Architects Dir Jim Heverin: "With the team’s community and supporters at its core, fans will be as close as five meters from the pitch and every seat has been calculated to provide unrestricted sight lines to the entire field of play." The club, formerly known as Stroud FC, has been based at the New Lawn stadium in nearby Nailsworth since '06 (AJ, 11/3). ARCHPAPER's Jason Sayer wrote in many ways, it’s fitting that a team that was the world’s first all-vegan football club and has the word “Forest” in its name should play in a stadium made entirely of wood. The stadium will predictably be known as “Eco Park Stadium” -- perhaps an "unsurprising choice in the age of stadia bearing their financier’s namesake, which in this case is local green energy firm, Ecotricity." The stadium will be the focal point of the “Eco Park” development which "comprises 100 acres worth of space dedicated to sports and green technology." Forest Green Rovers’ current home ground actually "offers room for 5,140 though only 2,000 of this is seated." A stadium solely designed for football playing "will also be welcome news for fans." As London club West Ham United recently found out, multipurpose stadia -- often with seating miles away from the pitch -- "are bereft of atmosphere" (ARCHPAPER, 11/3).
