Forest Green Rovers Eco Park Stadium Zaha Hadid Architects

摘要

Imagine an architect at the height of their career having 'had enough' of designing sports stadiums. Yet this is how Jim Heverin, a director of Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), describes his state of mind, only half-seriously, when Gloucestershire football team Forest Green Rovers came knocking in 2016. By this point, Heverin had already designed the London Aquatics Centre, the now-scrapped vision for Tokyo's Olympic Stadium and Qatar's Al Janoub Stadium, completed last year for the 2022 World Cup. He'd been there, done that. And though his team had tried to push the boundaries by proposing climate-friendly timber structures and cladding, 'ultimately, wood was replaced with steel for cost-saving reasons,' he says. Clients did not demonstrate a genuine commitment to environment first, Heverin mentions: 'London would come closest, but sustainability wasn't even on the agenda in Tokyo.'