Planning permission has been granted to build the world’s first football stadium made almost entirely out of wood, which has been designed by Zaha Hadid Architects.
English League Two side Forest Green Rovers’ Eco Park will be a 5,000 capacity state-of-the-art wooden stadium on Junction 13 of the M5, along with landscaped parking and two pitches, one of which will be a 4G playing surface, with access for the local community.
Billed as “the greenest football stadium in the world”, by the club’s website, the stadium could be built within the next three years.
In an interview on the Forest Green Rovers website, chairman Dale Vince said it had taken five years to finally get approval, with the first attempt rejected by Stroud District Council in June.
He said: “It’s still going to take several years – I think it’s going to take us a year of detailed design work. This is an outline planning application. The best case [for the stadium opening] is three years if we started tomorrow.”
Forest Green Rovers, who are currently sixth in League Two, became the world’s first vegan football club in 2017.
Zaha Hadid Architects is responsible for 950 projects in 44 countries. The company, founded by the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, opened an office in Dubai in 2016.
Dubai developer Omniyat started the handover of commercial units at The Opus – the only building in Dubai created by Hadid, who died in 2016 – in October 2018. ME Dubai, which forms part of the stunning Business Bay property, the first ME by Meliá hotel in the Middle East and the only hotel in the world to be designed both inside and out by the late Zaha Hadid, is due to open in February 2020.
Abu Dhabi’s 842-metre-long Sheikh Zayed Bridge is also a design by Hadid, who took inspiration from sand dunes to create the structure’s curved arches.
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