ZHA Wins Competition to Design Hangzhou International Sports Centre

Anchoring the proposed Hangzhou International Sports Centre is a 60,000-seat football stadium that has been designed to FIFA standards, according to today's announcement from ZHA. (See more visualizations here.) The complex will also have a 19,000-seat indoor arena and an aquatics center with two 50-meter pools. 

Although it sounds like a project targeting professional sports teams and Olympic-level athletes, the International Sports Centre is being built to accommodate the city's growing population and, in turn, provide "a variety of facilities for grassroots players to professional athletes." 

The three facilities are connected to each other by a podium that "weaves through the site," per ZHA, and was "informed by the terracing of the tea farms on Hangzhou's surrounding hillsides." The striated exterior appearance of the project is heightened by the louvers covering the stadium, a feature meant to "blur the boundary between the interior and exterior."

According to Architects' Journal, ZHA beat seven other shortlisted architects, including Foster + Partners, Gensler and gmp · von Gerkan, Marg and Partners Architects, the large Hamburg-based practice known for the numerous football stadiums it designed in China, Brazil, and elsewhere.