Ensuring a platform for everyone, ArchDaily is rounding up, every once in a while, a curated selection from our readers’ submissions. With proposals coming from all over the world, our aim is to feature the best Unbuilt Architecture out there.
In this article, we are highlighting proposals that were awarded the first prize in international competitions. Each one of these projects showcases a unique conceptual approach and responds to a different program. With a mixed-use project in France, a market in Helsinki, an aquarium in New York and a civic building in Norway, to name a few, the variety of these unbuilt interventions underlines the vast scope of the architectural field.
The world’s greenest football stadium, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects will be built in Gloucestershire, England after planning permissions were finally granted by the local council.
Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Projections show that urbanization combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050. Living in these densely urbanized pockets is not just ridiculously expensive, but also substandard for average and low economic groups. Moreover, the cost of living increases so rapidly that being at the same pace with it becomes almost impossible for most households, resulting in an abysmal quality of life.
Paris, the capital of France has been inhabited since the beginning of 3rd Century BC along the banks of river Seine. It started as the hub of trading center which eventually led to its growth as a metropolis. By mid-18th Century, it became densely populated with a cityscape that had not changed since the middle ages. Napoleon III hired Hausmann for one of the largest urban transformations. Consequently, he built the first transport network encircling Paris, transforming it from a medieval town to an industrial center of 19th Century.
This railway network, known as Petite Ceinture, initially
The definition of crime is culturally subjective. This subjectivity used to help us define law and punishment in a more rational manner in the past. Today, this subjectivity placed against pacing time and increasing globalization is not easy to rationalize anymore.
We see this in many walks of life where assets like gold which used to be the driving force of an economy. Where trade and even countries were valued based on how much gold reserves they had in the past. In today’s context, trade depends on technology and the currency here is information. The millions of gigabytes of data that
Paul Goldberger has a new book out, released just this week, entitled Ballpark: Baseball in the American City. Taking a page from the Ken Burns playbook, the book looks at a particularly American building type as a lens for looking at the broader culture of cities. Goldberger’s premise is a good one: Ballparks do parallel, to a remarkable degree, trends in American urbanism. They start as an escape from the city, then the city builds up around them. Post–World War II, they escape to the suburbs, then decades later return to the city. Today, privatization of the public realm and real estate development are driving the agenda. Recently I talked with Goldberger about the new book and a whole slew of magical ballparks, both living and long gone.
Construction has been completed on the Al Janoub Stadium, the first stadium commissioned for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and Aecom, and situated in the city of Al Wakrah, the stadium underwent a design process beginning in 2013, and was inaugurated on May 16th 2019.
To anyone enrolled in an architecture school, final year projects tend to be the perfect time to go all in. Whether you go for 3D visualizations or build remarkable models, your final presentation is the chance to display every conceptual and technical skill acquired throughout the years.
For his B.A. Final project, architect Mohammad Pirdavari of Ati-Naghsh Hamraz Consultants, presented his modernist stadium proposal in a series of freehand Airbrushdrawings. His intricate graphics helped accentuate the stadiums’ raw material and detailed relationship between the main exposed structure, and the smaller covered one.
3XN has designed a new multipurpose arena on the site of the former Olympic cycling track stadium in Munich’s Olympic Park. The Copenhagen-based firm was awarded the contract with German landscape and urban planning firm LATZ+PARTNER to design an 11,500-capacity arena that will serve as the home of German ice hockey champions Munich Red Bulls and German basketball champions FC Bayern Munich.
Manifesting as an oval structure, the sports arena “naturally and respectfully melds into the world-famous Olympic Park with its many iconic buildings.” A green roof combines with a façade of vertical lamellas to allow the scheme to blend with its urban context, with breaks in the lamellas forming glass-paneled entrances.
https://www.archdaily.com/911573/3xn-design-a-respectful-stadium-for-munichs-olympic-parkNiall Patrick Walsh
Oakland-Alameda Coliseum. Image Courtesy of Bjarke Ingels Group
After revealing the design for the new Oakland Athletics baseball stadium, Bjarke Ingels Group has proposed a new use for the existing 51-year-old Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. The existing stadium will be overhauled into a new commercial and housing hub to create new economic, cultural, and recreational opportunities. The Coliseum will be converted into a sunken amphitheater at the heart of a new municipal park.
The competition was organized in response to the fact that the world creates more than a billion tons of garbage per year, most of which is incinerated, buried, and explored to landfills. As populations and major cities expand, so too must our “ability to reverse wasteful tendencies and begin living more efficiently and sustainably.”
https://www.archdaily.com/910049/competition-winning-ideas-for-multi-purpose-stadiums-on-former-lagos-landfillNiall Patrick Walsh
The recently-completed Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid by Cruz y Ortiz Architects has been named as the best stadium in the world during the World Football Summit 2018. The stadium was opened in September 2017 and is set to host the 2019 UEFA Champions League final in May of this year.
In awarding the accolade, the jury praised the scheme’s aesthetics, operational program, flexibility to hold a wide range of events, use of technology, and “above all, a unique experience for the spectator in terms of comfort, services, and safety.”
https://www.archdaily.com/908825/cruz-y-ortiz-architects-wanda-metropolitano-declared-the-worlds-best-stadiumNiall Patrick Walsh
Design firm Sasaki has unveiled a design to transform Shanghai's Hongkou soccer stadium into a sustainable health and wellness hub. Rethinking China's first professional soccer stadium, the project aims to bring new life into the 1990s single-purpose structure. The design was formed by addressing the lack of connection between the stadium and Luxun Park. As a result, the park’s landscape is extended through the stadium and rises to meet the landscape as it flows through the building.
Oakland Baseball Stadium. Image Courtesy of Oakland Athletics / Bjarke Ingels Group
Bjarke Ingels Group, James Corner Field Operations, and Gensler have released new renderings of the new Oakland Athletics baseball stadium and surrounding development. The new stadium will replace the Oakland A’s existing 51-year-old Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, which the A’s share with the Oakland Raiders football team. The mega-ballpark includes a waterfront “jewel box” stadium at Howard Terminal and would turn the current Coliseum site into a tech and housing hub.
1. Rungrado 1st of May Stadium / Pyongyang, North Korea. Image via Viktoria Gaman / Shutterstock.com
In 776 BC, the Olympic Games of antiquity were hosted at the Olympia stadium in Peloponnese, Greece, an arena widely believed to be the world’s oldest stadium. The elongated U-shaped track and stand had a capacity of up to 45,000 people.
The existing Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Image via BIG
The Oakland Athletics baseball team have hired Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), James Corner Field Operations, and Gensler to lead the design process for their new ballpark and surrounding development in California. The new stadium will replace the Oakland A’s existing 51-year-old Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, which the A’s share with the Oakland Raiders football team.
It has been reported by the San Francisco Business Times that BIG will lead the masterplan for the privately-financed ballpark, either at Howard Terminal or near the existing stadium, while Gensler will collaborate on the ballpark design. Field Operations will adopt the role of landscape architect for the development.
https://www.archdaily.com/900688/big-gensler-and-james-corner-field-operations-to-design-new-stadium-for-oakland-athletics-baseball-teamNiall Patrick Walsh
I hope you have caught your breath after this year’s FIFA World Cup. France’s win in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium marked the end of an era; the last World Cup with a classic format. After the 2022 Winter tournament in Qatar, the competition will be expanded to 48 teams (rather than the current 32).
Al Thumama / Ibrahim Jaidah. Image Cortesía de Comité Supremo de Entrega y Legado
France took home the gold in this year's World Cup, however, in four years time, the world will turn its eyes to Qatar for another round of soccer mania. Preparations for the 2022 World Cup are already in full swing, with the construction and restoration of 8 stadiums that will host teams and fans from across the globe.
Get to know the 8 Qatar 2022 World Cup stadiums below.