Sports Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

For architects, it is a project perhaps more recognizable in plan than in photograph. The dazzling rhythmic complexity of the construction drawings for Barcelona’s Olympic Archery Range, completed in 1991, brought more fame to the 1992 Olympic event than any arrow shot from the buildings’ shadow. The drawings show an overlay of organic curves and rectilinear shapes working in sublime harmony, producing a composition that clearly conveys both the architects' concept and the process through which it was developed. Amazingly, the project is no less spectacular in person than on paper, and its completion helped launch the husband-and-wife partnership of Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós into international stardom.

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Designed to seat 33,000 people, stadiumconcept and IAA architecten’s proposal for Minsk’s newest football stadium has a unique and allusive form. The column-like supports of the stadium roof resemble tractor valves, a reference to Minsk’s booming tractor fabrication industry. These tapering columns provide a signature identity for a building that, in addition to being a stadium, will serve the city as a shopping and business center.

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The Qatar Olympic Committee has selected Grimshaw as the winner of a competition to design a series of recreational sports facilities across Qatar. Grimshaw's design utilizes a 'kit-of-parts' concept to provide adaptable sports centers which suit the different requirements of each site.

The Al Farjan Recreational Sports Facilities will each feature an elevated cafe at the center of the complex, around which football, volleyball, basketball and handball facilities can be added, as well as outdoor children’s playgrounds, public amenities and social areas.

Read on after the break for more on the design.

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We’ve all traveled along an interstate overpass. In most cases they are constructed of bleak concrete, tattooed in graffiti, and built with the sole purpose of getting you across lanes of heavy traffic as quickly as possible. They are a bridge at the bare minimum, but what if they provide something more for the communities they connect? 

In a recent ideas competition, AIA Portland called for creative proposals that would best bridge local neighborhoods divided by Interstate 405. The winning entry, “Five Bridges” by chadbourne + doss, posits that the best way to do this is with inhabitable overpasses.

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