One Hit Wonder

Relaunch

In nort­hern New Mexico, where the sky hangs deep blue over a white land­scape covered in plaster dust, a struc­ture was built for a few days at the end of 2024 that was more sculp­ture than sports faci­lity: a 200-metre-long running track, formed from the earth, born from the place – and destined to return to it: the “EQT Track”.

Adidas and the PlayLab design studio created an instal­la­tion in an active gypsum quarry near Santa Fe that combines sports archi­tec­ture and land­scape for a short time. The EQT Track is neither a stadium nor a trai­ning center, but a land­scape inter­ven­tion; a tempo­rary monu­ment to move­ment itself.

The occa­sion was the product (re)launch of a tradi­tional shoe from Adidas: the relaunch of the “Adidas EQT” line.

Archi­tec­ture made of dust and time

The running track was built enti­rely from found mate­rials: Plaster, sand, water and biode­gra­dable pigments. No asphalt, no plastic, no imported buil­ding mate­rials. The surface was shaped, compacted and given a soft, shim­me­ring white finish that blends almost invi­sibly into the land­scape in the sunlight.

Two walls frame the ellip­tical track: an outer boun­dary, only one meter high, which cuts off the horizon and directs the view inwards; and an inner wall, up to two meters high, which forms a shel­tered space – a place to take a break with benches made of raw wood and a central fire­place. Here, inside the ring, the running track is trans­formed into a kind of pavi­lion. Move­ment and tran­quil­lity, space and ritual intert­wine.

The ephemeral as a design idea

The project was desi­gned to be ephemeral from the outset. The mate­rials used return to the quar­ry’s produc­tion cycle after extra­c­tion. The EQT Track resists the idea of disposable archi­tec­ture, even though it is a highly tempo­rary struc­ture.

The boun­da­ries between art, instal­la­tion and archi­tec­ture are blurred. In any case, the project is walkable. The path follows the natural terrain, dispenses with arti­fi­cial leve­ling and preserves the topo­graphy as part of the spatial expe­ri­ence.

Viewed from above, it barely stands out against the light back­ground – more of a gesture than a buil­ding. Up close, however, it reveals a precise, almost ritua­li­stic order. No start, no finish, no grand­stands. The run becomes a circle, a medi­ta­tion. Move­ment becomes archi­tec­ture.

A place between now and never again

The track was only offi­ci­ally used for one day before it began to slowly disin­te­grate – carried by the wind, smoothed by the rain. But its power lies precisely in this ephemer­a­lity. It shows how tempo­rary archi­tec­ture can be unders­tood not as a loss, but as a conscious form: buil­ding as a process, not as a posses­sion.

The EQT Track is an adver­ti­sing space for a shoe coll­ec­tion, but also a spec­ta­cular spatial state­ment about our percep­tion of a place and the rela­ti­onship between body and land­scape.