FIFA World Cup 2022 Will Get Its First ‘Transportable’ Stadium, Seats 40,000

This year, Qatar will be hosting the inaugural World Cup in the Middle East, and it will be the first time the competition is taking place at the end of the year instead of during the summer.

In another first, this World Cup will feature a “transportable” stadium that can be broken down, transported, and then reassembled for use elsewhere. Called the 974 stadium, in reference to the country’s international dialing code, the structure itself comprises the exact same number of recycled shipping containers.

The concept was designed by Madrid-based Fenwick Iribarren Architects and will seat 40,000 spectators.

According to Input, the shipping containers are housed within a steel framework, with enough space for the pitch, bathrooms, concession stands, and even media rooms. Natural ventilation was considered in its design, eliminating the need for air conditioning altogether. Plus, its eco-friendly construction methods have seen 40% less water usage than with conventional developments.

With plans to donate the stadium to lower-income nations, Qatar hopes to avoid the fate of many host cities who see their stadiums abandoned after events have concluded. As reported by NPR, a US$550 million stadium in Brasilia, Brazil, was used to store buses just a year after the country hosted the competition.

“We really felt that it wasn’t necessary for Qatar to have this eighth stadium after the World Cup,” explained Mark Fenwick, one of the partners in the architectural firm, as per Marca.

“So, we decided to take a very radical strategy, which was to see if we can actually design the stadium which is not only dismantle-able, but was also transportable, and re-mountable in another country,” he added.

Should the stadium eventually be set up elsewhere, Fenwick said that it could be reassembled as a full stadium, or “as different pieces which could be put together as a variable amount of sports buildings.”

The stadium was first trialed during the FIFA Arab World Cup that was hosted in the nation late last year.

[via Input and Marca, images via Qatar 2022]