Caruso St John Architects | NP2F | Taller Héctor Barroso | Octavio Buigas | Pier Luigi Nervi | AgwA | Arsomsilp | Turenscape | Níall McLaughlin Architects
The 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, which kick off on 26 July, aim to be the greenest in history: ‘The era of gigantism is over’, says its organising committee, promising to prioritise reuse of existing venues rather than grand new commissions. But, as Sven Daniel Wolfe writes in this issue’s keynote, ‘The Olympics are unlikely to ever be authentically sustainable until we separate the profit motive from the equation.’
Historically, stadium architecture has pushed engineering to its technical limits, as seen in the concrete structures of Pier Luigi Nervi, but the cementitious approach on show in Zürich’s new ice hockey arena belongs to a bygone fossil-fuel era. Gigantism, it would seem, is still rife.
This issue hopes to show that, despite claims to the contrary, sports are always political. The modernist structures of the Parque Deportivo José Martí in Havana epitomised the revolutionary government’s socialist principles. More recently, space for sports has been carved out of the city by the Brussels government, as part of its ‘neighbourhood contracts’ policy.
Sports practised recreationally tend to be concealed in enclosed sheds that bear no relation to their surroundings. Benjakitti Park in Thailand and the work of NP2F in France show that this can be done differently, in ways that help democratise access to physical activity. People will always find ways to exercise and play sports; informal football fields in Brazil’s favelas, for example, are ‘spaces of community resistance in the context of great urban precarity’. Sports persist, even when architects and planners fail to cater for them.
1512: Sports
Cover (above) courtesy of Neville Gabie and Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London
Over the last 25 years Neville Gabie has been documenting informal and unusual goalposts around the world. It is an ongoing project, now spanning more than 50 countries in an archive of well over 1,000 images, for which Gabie is currently seeking a publisher
Folio (lead image) Johnston Press Plc / National World
Fans watch the game at Edinburgh’s Tynecastle Stadium from the rooftops, the city momentarily transformed into a theatre
Keynote
Olympic limits
Sven Daniel Wolfe
Building
Thinning ice: Swiss Life Arena, Zürich, Switzerland by Caruso St John Architects
Eleanor Beaumont
Retrospective
NP2F
Manon Mollard
Essay
The football will be televised
Victor Onyebueke
Building
Ground stroke: Cabo Sports Complex, Baja California Sur, Mexico by Taller Héctor Barroso
Suleman Anaya
Outrage
Paralympic obstacle course
Natalie Kane
Revisit
Parque Deportivo José Martí, Havana, Cuba by Octavio Buigas
Belmont Freeman
Reputations
Pier Luigi Nervi (1891–1979)
Catharine Rossi
Essay
Brazil’s floodplain fields
Guilherme Wisnik
Photo essay
Making space for sports
Building
Sporting chance: ECAM Youth Centre, Brussels, Belgium by AgwA
Christophe Van Gerrewey
Building
City lungs: Benjakitti Park, Bangkok, Thailand by Arsomsilp Community and Environmental Architect with Turenscape
Pirasri Povatong
Building
Open play: International Rugby Experience, Limerick, Ireland by Níall McLaughlin Architects
Michael K Hayes
Essay
Architects’ games
Kristina Rapacki
