Container becomes icon

Stadium 974 will not be rebuilt after the World Cup, but dismantled. That is new.

Stadium 974 stadium is one of the most inno­va­tive of the eight stadia for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ and is also planned to fully resolve the legacy issue. After the tour­na­ment it will be enti­rely dismantled and shipped to other loca­tions.

The idea of using ship­ping contai­ners, a trans­port module used in world commerce, enables the struc­ture as well as the stadium faci­li­ties, toilets, retail areas and prayer rooms to be unplugged,

disas­sem­bled and then shipped to other count­ries or distri­buted to other areas of Qatar.

The very first thought when confron­ting a white sheet of paper was to develop another iconic and amazing stadium design. However, the design team, formed with our office, and Schlaich Berger­mann & Part­ners as Struc­tural Engi­neers, and Hilson Moran as MEP Engi­neers, began from the very begin­ning to feel this was an oppor­tu­nity to develop some­thing never done before, a stadium which would finally resolve the legacy values for such an inter­na­tional event.

Stadium 974 wants to be the opposite of a “white elephant”, namely completely demountable and transportable.

So many times have count­ries deve­loped foot­ball stadia for a major event, whether a World Cup or the Olym­pics, which after­wards had no real economic or soci­ally sustainable legacy use. Stadia after major inter­na­tional events have been left to rot, as the massive costs of their upkeep

were not accounted for in any budgets due to the lack of a real econo­mic­ally sustainable legacy plan. Many such expen­sive and unde­r­used ‘white elephant’ struc­tures can be found in count­ries such as Greece, Russia, Brazil and South Africa.

 The need for the stadium to be dismounted and taken to other loca­tions is para­mount for the success of the idea. For this reason the archi­tects and engi­neers strove to estab­lish rational and cost-effec­tive cons­truc­tion methods, with as few parts as possible, essen­ti­ally by applying module elements.

Stadium 974 is located directly by the sea.This provides the opportunity to load and unload the stadium containers.

If a stadium is to be cost-effec­tive there needs to be a ratio­na­li­sa­tion of the struc­tural and engi­nee­ring systems. A system which is able to be repeated is essen­tial to achie­ving a cost-effec­tive project, allo­wing for both simple cons­truc­tion and simple and effec­tive decon­s­truc­tion.

The main idea for the stadium was to use stan­dar­dised ship­ping contai­ners as the prime ‘buil­ding blocks’.

The entire stadium was built with only ten different modules.

This solu­tion means the project is totally modular. The columns and beams are all desi­gned to be bolted toge­ther, allo­wing for easy assembly during cons­truc­tion; after the event the whole struc­ture can be unbolted, disas­sem­bled and trans­ported with great ease.

Stadium 974 could become a milestone in sports architecture for major events. Especially if we see it again at the next World Cup.

The stadium could thus be fully func­tional for any subse­quent major sport event such as the 2026 Asian or FIFA World Cup.