Internally Stadium 974 looks like nothing out of the ordinary. But externally it is an entirely different story.
Built close to Doha’s waterfront on a reclaimed peninsula, this is the World Cup’s first ever entirely temporary stadium. Once the football is over the structure will be dismantled and seating shipped off (as with BDP Pattern’s Education City Stadium) to create new stadium progeny across less affluent parts of the world.
This is a playful and highly successful piece of massive temporary architecture. So many architects have toyed with ideas of the temporary over the decades, but rarely been able to follow through. Here Fenwick Iribarren have drawn on the seafront setting to conjure up the image of a container port, using hundreds of shipping containers, some of which contain toilets and hospitality concessions.
From the pitchside, it is a much more staid and conventional affair, but that hardly seems to matter. Although destined to disappear once the tournament is over, Stadium 974 will surely generate some of the most memorable architectural images that visiting fans and global viewers will take away from the event.
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