Form Follows Function | Zaha Hadid Architects’ Most Iconic Sports Venues

Design — 18 February 2020 / 1 min read

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AUTHOR — Aaron Toumazou

Iraqi-British architect Dame Zaha Hadid was best known for her avant-garde curvy designs, leaving behind an archive of striking museums, opera houses, airports and more when she passed away several years ago. Today, her virtuosic design aesthetic lives on today through the Zaha Hadid Architects firm she founded, notably in the form of some of the most iconic sporting venues in the world.

Hadid’s designs have redefined the sporting landscape, injecting it with optimism for the future through advanced design, material and construction. Consider, for example, the firm’s two hotly anticipated upcoming openings, a Qatari world cup stadium with a distinctly vaginal design (particularly interesting given the male dominance both in football and the middle east) and an eco-tech hub in the east of England.

Here, we’ve rounded up some of Hadid’s most inventive and iconic sports and leisure venues. Check them out in the gallery below.

Form Follows Function | Zaha Hadid Architects’ Most Iconic Sports Venues

Bergisel Ski Jump, Innsbruck

Completed in 2002, the Bergisel Ski Jump stands tall above Innsbruck’s alpine skyline at 50m high. Along with highly specialised sports facilities and the jump itself is a tower-top cafe and viewing platform over picturesque surrounds.

“The Ski Jump is a concise piece of functional design, an instrument for high-performance sport, shaped with mathematical precision,” said Hadid of the design. “The challenge here was to integrate a new, initially alien element into a given formula: the cafe and sundeck. The assemblage of elements was resolved in the manner of nature, developing a seamless hybrid, where parts are smoothly articulated and fused into an organic unity. The result is a rather unusual silhouette on Bergisel.”

London Aquatics Centre, London

Built for the capital’s Summer Olympics hosting duties in 2012, Hadid’s aquatics centre is the pride of the park, emerging from the ground as a wave with its undulating roof that’s inspired by water in motion. Inside, two 50 metre swimming pools and a 24-metre diving pool hosted some of the most memorable events of that year’s games, and it continues to be used for international events when leisurely local swimmers aren’t doing lengths.

Inherent to the design, though, are the building’s sustainability credentials. Its construction was praised for its unusual use of concrete mixes, while its minimized energy efficiencies are exemplary – high levels of insulation, low-velocity ventilation and highly efficient water-based heating systems. Not just a pretty facade.

Al Janoub Stadium, Qatar

Though it’s drawn many comparisons to female genitalia, Hadid’s addition to the line-up of stadiums which will host the 2022 world cup in Qatar, on paper, is inspired by the dhows fishing boats seen in the Al Wakrah harbour.

Aside from its unique and provocative design, though, the temperature has been optimised to compensate for the intense heat Qatar will likely experience in the summer of 2022. Its operable roof has been crafted from pleated PTFE fabric, which extends like a sail to shade players and spectators alike, while air diffusers and under-seat cooling nozzles pumping cool air into the stadium will be re-cooled and recycled after being captured in the bowl.

Gateway to Stroud, Gloucestershire

Zaha Hadid Architects’ upcoming project is its greenest yet. Several greenhouse-like buildings will connect an eco campus set to push boundaries of sustainable development while creating 4,000 jobs in the green economy to the first football stadium constructed completely of wood and powered by sustainable energy sources.

It’s fitting that this first-of-its-kind carbon neutral/negative site will be the home of Forest Green Rovers, a football club that’s already been doing things a little differently. The world’s first vegan team, you’ll not be finding Pukka Pies and quarter pounders in its kiosks on completion.