Knock on wood

​Forest Green Rovers Eco Stadium

Zaha Hadid Architects

Situation

The Forest Green Rovers Eco Stadium is to become more than just a stadium. Users Forest Green Rovers are the ” gree­nest foot­ball club in the world “, their presi­dent is Dale Vince, the founder of Ecot­ri­city. The stadium will be the centre­piece of the £100 million, 40-hectare sports and green tech­no­logy park deve­lo­p­ment funded by Ecot­ri­city.

The Green Rovers Eco Stadium was desi­gned by Zaha Hadid Archi­tects, and their inte­rest in explo­ring new forms, mate­rials and tech­no­lo­gies is — proven.

However, at the moment there is not much that indi­cates that this ambi­tious project will become reality.
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Vision

Forest Green Rovers have estab­lished a holi­stic vision for the site to retain its pastoral quali­ties whilst adding new faci­li­ties for the town.

While the stadium will be the centre­piece, the project creates a new public realm with both recrea­tional and occu­pa­tional uses, enab­ling the entire site to contri­bute to the town — not only on match days, but every day of the year.

Design

The design retains and enhances the exis­ting meadow land­scape of the site whilst adding the stadium and other func­tions for the town. Embo­dying low carbon cons­truc­tion methods and opera­tional processes, it will be the first all timber foot­ball stadium with almost every element made of sustain­ably sourced timber inclu­ding its struc­ture, roof canti­le­vers and louvered clad­ding.

As a buil­ding mate­rial, timber is highly durable, recy­clable and beau­tiful. The proxi­mity of the stadium’s struc­tural elements to each other has also been deter­mined to enable the seating terraces and floor slab to be made from timber. In most other stadiums, these elements are concrete or steel.

The stadium’s roof is covered with a trans­pa­rent membrane, which contri­butes to turf growth, mini­mizes stark shadows for players and fans and reduces the volu­metric impact of the stadium from distant views in the surroun­ding land­scape.
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Atmosphere

With the team’s commu­nity and supporters at its core, fans will be as close as five meters from the pitch and the posi­tion of every seat has been calcu­lated to provide excel­lent, unrest­ricted views of the entire field of play. The stadium’s conti­nuous spec­tator bowl surroun­ding the pitch will maxi­mise matchday atmo­sphere.

The stadium’s design incor­po­rates the club’s future growth. Initi­ally for 5,000 spec­ta­tors, incre­asing to 10,000 with the club’s success, expan­sion from phase 1 to phase 2 can be achieved without the costs of major cons­truc­tion works.

Carbon

Forest Green Rovers’ new stadium and Eco Park aims to be carbon neutral or carbon nega­tive, inclu­ding measures such as the provi­sion of on-site rene­wable energy gene­ra­tion.

Dale Vince, Ecot­ri­city founder and Forest Green Rovers chairman, said: “The really standout thing about this stadium is that it’s going to be almost enti­rely made of wood – the first time that will have been done anywhere in the world.

“The importance of wood is not only that it’s natu­rally occur­ring, it has very low embo­died carbon – about as low as it gets for a buil­ding mate­rial.

“And when you bear in mind that around three quar­ters of the life­time carbon impact of any stadium comes from its buil­ding mate­rials, you can see why that’s so important – and it’s why our new stadium will have the lowest embo­died carbon of any stadium in the world.
Forrest Green Rovers

Eco Park

Half of Eco Park will consist of state-of-the-art sporting faci­li­ties, inclu­ding the new stadium, grass and all-weather trai­ning pitches, publicly acces­sible multi-disci­pli­nary faci­li­ties, and a sports science hub.

The other half will comprise a green tech­no­logy busi­ness park with sustain­ably built commer­cial offices and light indus­trial units, giving Eco Park the poten­tial to create up to 4,000 jobs, inclu­ding room for the continued expan­sion of green energy company Ecot­ri­city, who have submitted the overall proposal and who are already the biggest employer in Stroud with 700 people located across four sites.

The proposal will also see the deve­lo­p­ment of a nature reserve on the site, a poten­tial public trans­port hub, inclu­ding a Stroud Park and Ride, as well as help with the resto­ra­tion of the Stroud­water canal.

Local parish coun­cils initi­ally endorsed the entire project, but rejected it in the summer of 2019.

Whether and how things will continue is curr­ently comple­tely uncer­tain. A shame.

We did this.

Project data and compa­nies involved

Client

Forest Green Rovers Foot­ball Club
Ecot­ri­city

Renderings

Zaha Hadid Archi­tects (ZHA)

 

Architect

Zaha Hadid Archi­tects (ZHA)

Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schu­ma­cher, Jim Heverin, Sara Klomps, Kart­hi­keyan, Aruna­chalam, Sara Akbari, Muriel Boselli, Avery Chen, Saman Dadgo­star, Cynthia Du, Paulo Flores, Fabian Hecker, Jakub Klaska, Vincent Konaté, Igor Pantic, Edgar Payan, Sven Torres, Theodor Wender, Richard Wase­n­egger

Address

Forest Green Rovers Foot­ball Club
The New Lawn Stadium Another Way
Nails­worth GL6 0FG
Verei­nigtes König­reich

Text

Zaha Hadid Archi­tects (ZHA)

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