The final project, developed in collaboration with AECOM, resembles a traditional Arab dhow: Al Wakrah is a major commercial port, and such a similarity is more than appropriate. The stadium will be covered with a streamlined roof, which will protect both spectators and football players from the scorching sun: on a summer day, the temperature in Qatar can rise above 50 degrees.
Due to such extreme weather conditions, the option of holding the World Cup in winter, when it is a little cooler, is now being considered, but so far the architects are working with the most severe option in mind. Mechanical air cooling and other means are expected to keep the temperature in the stadium below 30 degrees.
Al Wakrah Stadium from Zaha Hadid Architects on Vimeo.
During the World Cup, the arena will accommodate 40 thousand spectators, and after its completion, the upper rows of the stands will be dismantled and presented to developing countries, thereby reducing it to 20,000 spectator seats.
Hadid Stadium is one of nine to be built in Qatar by 2022. It and four other arenas are already at an advanced design stage, and construction will begin in 2014.
Qatar has now attracted worldwide attention due to the mistreatment of migrant construction workers from South Asia who will erect the facilities of the future championship: they are insufficiently provided with water and food and are forced to work under the scorching sun, which leads to deaths from overheating and dehydration. At the same time, their passports are taken away and their salaries are not paid, essentially turning them into slaves. However, when a CNN reporter recently asked Zaha Hadid if she was worried about the situation of workers building her buildings in third world countries, she evasively replied that this was not her area of responsibility, but the internal affair of each country, and that politicians and journalists, not architects.
However, this is not the only "sports" scandal associated with Hadid: the project of her Olympic stadium in Tokyo has provoked protests from major Japanese architects, outraged by its size and "artificiality", which are in no way consistent with the context. The leader of the dissent was Fumihiko Maki, who even organized a symposium on this issue, supported by So Fujimoto, Toyo Ito and Kengo Kuma. They did not demand the cancellation of the project intended for the 2020 Games, selected as a result of a jury competition chaired by Tadao Ando, but called for it to be reduced and reworked: the current version of 290,000 m2 will cost about $ 3 billion. In response, the Japanese authorities promised to reduce the scale of the facility, but refused to change its architectural design.
