Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup: The Latest Architecture and News

New York-based firm M Castedo Architects have unveiled their designs for the "Silver Pearl Hotel", a 1000-room luxury resort and conference facility for the Qatar 2022 World Cup located 1.5 kilometers off the Doha coastline. The $1.6 billion design consists of two 30-story semicircular towers connected by a full height, transparent climate controlled atrium, with unimpeded views of the sea beyond. Access to the hotel will be provided by a four lane elevated causeway over the sea - or alternatively by private yacht or helicopter, say the architects.

+ 3

Videos

A new, 40,000-seat stadium has been unveiled in preparation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Planned for Qatar’s Education City, the home of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), the “Qatar Foundation Stadium” is the fourth stadium design that has been released by the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC).

The structure is intended to reference Islamic architecture. Both the interior and exterior will be clad in translucent triangular panels whose color and patterns will shift throughout the day, depending on the position of the sun and influence of artificial illumination which will reflect the events happening from within the stadium. 

Read on after the break for more on the design.

+ 5

The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy has released images of the third 2022 World Cup Stadium planned for Qatar. Revamping an existing 40-year-old stadium at Gulf Cup in Riyadh, the Khalifa International Stadium will be expanded to accommodate 40,000 spectators and equipped with an “innovative cooling technology” that will allow players to compete at a comfortable 26 degrees Celsius.

Read on after the break for more on the design.

+ 2

Qatar's Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy have released images of the latest stadium designed for the 2022 World Cup. Located in Al Khor City, the Al Bayt Stadium will also be surrounded by the new Al Bayt district, which will host retail space and restaurants, as well as landscaped paths for residents to use as horseriding, cycling and jogging tracks.

The design - billed as "an entirely Qatari concept, reflecting Qatar’s proud history and culture" - is based on the Bayt Al Sha’ar, a black and white tent used traditionally by nomadic people in Qatar, which would have been a welcome symbol of hospitality for desert travelers.

Read on after the break for more on the design

+ 6

An expert on the Middle Eastern construction industry has said that architects working in Qatar are worried about the future of their projects, following the allegations sparked by a Sunday Times report last week of corruption during the country's 2022 World Cup bid. With many people calling for Qatar to be stripped of the event or for the bidding process to be re-run, there is a chance that Qatar might have to pull the plug on many of its major projects.

Speaking to the Architects' Journal Richard Thompson, the Editorial Director of the Middle East Economics Digest, said "A lot of people out here are watching it nervously."

Read on for more of the comments made by Thompson

Four firms have been shortlisted to design Qatar's Lusail Stadium, the centerpiece for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Foster + Partners, David Chipperfield Architects, Mossessian & Partners and Mangera Yvars Architects are now competing to design the 80,000 seat stadium which will host the international event alongside Zaha Hadid's Al Wakrah stadium and others.

Read on after the break for more on the shortlist

Zaha Hadid’s unfortunate comments in response to worker deaths on construction sites for the 2022 World Cup has made Qatar the eye of a storm that has been raging globally for decades. But it’s not just about Qatar. This has been an issue for as long as there have been construction sites and for as long as poor people have swarmed to them for a chance at a better life.

Construction booms and migrant construction workers have always been two sides of the same equation, both dependent on the other, and, by the twisted logic of the global economy, both are the reason for the other’s existence. No migrant labor pool = no global city = no fantastic architecture, or something to this effect. 

The migrant workers are the silent collaborators in global architecture, the invisible, faceless, “untouchables” who make the cost-effective construction of these buildings possible.

This article, by Martin Pedersen, originally appeared on Metropolis Magazine as "Governments, Not Architects, Should Shoulder Responsibility for Worker Deaths, Says Hadid."

Zaha Hadid set off a mini-shitstorm [the other day] when she declared that architects have “nothing to do with the workers” who have died on construction sites in Qatar, site of the World Cup in 2022. The Guardian had reported that nearly 900 workers had died in the past two years building the infrastructure required for the massive event. One of the projects under construction is Hadid’s Al-Wakrah stadium (above), a swoopy, curvilinear 40,000 seat facility that some critics likened to a vagina when the scheme was unveiled to the public. “It’s not my duty as an architect to look at it,” Hadid said, on the worker deaths. “I cannot do anything about it because I have no power to do anything about it. I think it’s a problem anywhere in the world. But, as I said, I think there are discrepancies all over the world.”

Her tone-deaf comments elicited a firestorm of predictable outrage, but I’d contend they had a near-truth about them. As I see it, Hadid had four possible courses of action, all of them limited in scope. 

When The Guardian recently asked Zaha Hadid about the 500 Indians and 382 Nepalese migrant workers who have reportedly died in preparations for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the architect behind the al-Wakrah stadium responded:

"I have nothing to do with the workers. I think that's an issue the government – if there's a problem – should pick up. Hopefully, these things will be resolved."

Located in Doha, Sharq Crossing is a set of three interconnected bridges spanning almost ten kilometres in the Doha Bay. Designed by the famed architect Santiago Calatrava, the bridge will connect the city's cultural district in the north to Hamad International Airport and the central business district in West Bay. The bridges, which are designed to accomodate as many as 2,000 vehicles an hour per lane, are also flanked by a series of subsea tunnels to manage and direct the flow of traffic across the bay.

After the controversial lampooning of Zaha Hadid's Al Wakrah Stadium in Qatar, Anthony Flint of the Atlantic Cities casts a critical eye over how the internet, and the swarms of would-be architecture critics that reside there, have changed the way that buildings are designed. Tracking the trend for this form of criticism from Le Corbusier's "two pianos having sex" (aka the Carpenter Centre at Harvard) to the hyper-reactive culture of modern online criticism today, he looks at how architects - and PR companies - are responding. You can read the full article here.

In an exclusive interview with TIME, Zaha Hadid has finally responded to the claims - voiced most notably by Jon Stewart - that her design for the Al Wakrah Stadium (what will be Qatar's stadium for the 2022 World Cup) resembles female genitalia (Stewart in fact called Hadid the “Georgia O’Keeffe of things you can walk inside").

Videos

New details have emerged on Zaha Hadid Architects and AECOM’s 2022 FIFA World Cup stadium in Qatar. Scheduled to begin construction in late 2014, the 40,000-seat venue pulls inspiration from a local fishing boat - the Arabian dhow - to influence its overall design.

In response to the mounting criticism of Qatar's ability to host the 2022 World Cup, the "tiny Gulf Arab state" is considering developing floating hotels, luxury villas and a water park off the coast of Doha called Oryx Island to house the influx of visitors that will need accommodation during the games. The island would be developed by Barwa Real Estate Co, a firm partly owned by the government, at a cost of $5.5 million. Finish architecture firm, Global Accommodation Management (GAM) to design the various facilities which includes projects for a hotel and luxury villas that could house up to 25,000 people.

Join us after the break for more on this project.

After winning an international competition, OMA has been commissioned to masterplan a new 10km2 Airport City for a population of 200,000, linking the new Hamad International Airport with the city of Doha, Qatar. OMA’s masterplan is a series of four circular districts along a spine parallel to the HIA runways, intended to create a strong visual identity and districts with unique identities. Phase One of the 30-year masterplan, which links airside and landside developments for business, logistics, retail, hotels, and residences, will be mostly complete in time for the 2022 World Cup, hosted by Qatar.

Rem Koolhaas commented: “We are delighted and honored to participate in the exciting growth of Doha, in a project that is perhaps the first serious effort anywhere in the world to interface between an international airport and the city it serves.”

More on OMA's airport city after the break...