Forest Green Rovers to build stadium made almost entirely of wood
Leave it to a side named Forest Green Rovers to build an environmentally friendly ground made almost entirely of wood.
The National League club acquired the services of Zaha Hadid architects to fashion a new £100-million stadium outside of Stroud in the county Gloucestershire and a neighbouring 100-acre "eco park" to benefit local business.
With plans for 5,000 seats and one eye on a potential expansion to 10,000, the stadium will be constructed from timber.
"As a building material, timber is highly durable, recyclable and beautiful," Zaha Hadid director Jim Heverin told Designboom.
"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 maximize matchday atmosphere."
Forest Green's emphasis on the environment stems from club chairman Dale Vince's ambitions as Ecotricity founder. Ecotricity is a Gloucestershire-based company exploring alternative forms of energy, namely the use of wind turbines.
"Zaha Hadid architects has built some fantastic sports stadia and facilities around the world, including one at the olympic park in london, they’ve designed one of the stadiums for the 2022 world cup, and now they’ve designed one for forest green," Vince said.
The firm is also designing the Al Wakrah Stadium for the 2022 Qatar World Cup as well as hotels and residential towers ahead of the quadrennial games.
"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."
Here's a look at some renderings of the proposed stadium:
(Photos courtesy: Zaha Hadid Architects)