Following a seven-month international competition, English football club Forest Green Rovers has selected Zaha Hadid Architects to design its new football stadium.
The studio will build the ground completely out of wood, with the aim of making it “the greenest football stadium in the world.”
The stadium will be the centrepiece of the £100m Eco Park development –
a 100 acre sports and green technology business park proposal in Gloucestershire owned by clean energy group Ecotricity. It will sit alongside grass and all-weather training pitches, publicly accessible multi-disciplinary facilities and a sports science hub.
“Zaha Hadid have built some fantastic sport stadia around the world, including one at the Olympic Park in London and one of the five stadiums for the next World Cup in Qatar,” said
Dale Vince, Ecotricity founder and Forest Green Rovers chair. “Now they’ve designed one for Forest Green.”
Vince said the use of wood to build the “iconic and original new stadium” stadium “is the first time that will have been done anywhere in the world.” He added that the material was chosen for being both a naturally occurring material and having very low carbon content. “If you bear in mind that around three quarters of the lifetime carbon impact of any stadium comes from its building materials, you can see why this is so important – and it’s why our new stadium will have the lowest carbon content of any stadium in the world,” he said.
Forest Green announced the competition in March this year, and received over 50 entries from around the world, including Sweden, Germany, France, Britain and the United States.
In May, the club shortlisted nine entries, before
selecting two finalists – ZHA and Glenn Howells Architects – in August, who were given another two months to take their concepts further.
Jim Heverin, director at Zaha Hadid Architects, said the stadium will prove that “sustainable architecture can be dynamic and beautiful.”
“The club’s heritage, ambition and vision reflect our own, combining the latest material research and construction techniques with new design approaches to build a more ecologically sustainable and inclusive architecture,” he said.
“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 stadium’s continuous spectator bowl surrounding the pitch will maximise matchday atmosphere.”
