Global architectural design practice Populous’ two projects - Soccer City Stadium in South Africa and the Aviva Stadium in Ireland - have been honoured at World Architecture Festival Awards.
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| Pic : Soccer City - Johannesburg |
Soccer City, which hosted the 2010 FIFA world cup final, won the title beating competition from a shortlist of seven entries. The judges stated that the Soccer City National Stadium’s design makes a strong and memorable connection with its place in history, the game and the future of that area. The project was praised as a genuine example of a building forming deep and lasting roots in its culture and giving a new exciting future to an otherwise rundown area.
With its main form inspired by the traditional calabash, Populous and Boogertman and Partners have created an ‘African Pot’ which has already become a cultural signifier of the new South Africa and the FIFA World Cup.
Populous also celebrated its other success with the new Aviva Stadium being awarded the inaugural ONCE prize for accessible design.
The 50,000-seat Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, previously called the New Stadium at Lansdowne Road, can be stated as the first truly site responsive stadium of its kind in the world. Its organic form, mass, materials and aspect are defined by the site and its surrounds. The site, in the residential district of Dublin 4, is the historic home of international rugby and football in Ireland where the first game of international rugby was played in 1876. The stadium has been designed to be accessible for people with mobility difficulties, particularly those in wheelchairs, and for people with impaired sight or impaired hearing.
The general principle adopted is that disabled users are integrated with able-bodied people so far as practical. There are separated circulation routes in some locations, which provide safer routes for wheelchair users, but the accommodation is generally available to all. Key accessibility features include, amongst others, spectator seating spaces for people with disabilities distributed at all levels of the seating tiers and an FM band radio narrowcast system, used to serve the seating bowl, allowing spectators seated anywhere in the tiers to listen to this on radio receivers available from the stadium company.
Aviva Stadium, designed by Populous and Scott Tallon Walker, was also highly commended in the Sport category awards.
Source -http://www.worldinteriordesignnetwork.com
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