English Premier League football club Crystal Palace has been given the green light to build an “iconic” new Main Stand at its Selhurst Park home, after Croydon Council resolved to grant permission for the project designed to redevelop the stadium for the modern era. Sports architects KSS are overseeing the project, with their design vision first revealed in December last year. They are working with the club to increase the

New images of Tottenham Hotspur's forthcoming White Hart Lane stadium, currently under construction in north London, show the scale of the four huge display screens which will dominate the stadium's seating bowl. Supplied by AV specialist Daktronics, the four bespoke main LED video displays will total more than 1,000sq m in size. This includes two screens in the single tier, 17,500-capacity South Stand, each measuring 325sq m – making them

FC Barcelona’s ambitious plan to create a vibrant district dedicated to the club and its brand around a redeveloped Camp Nou stadium has been given the provisional green light by the city council. An agreement between the club and the city was reached yesterday (12 April) paving the way for a Modification to the General Metropolitan Plan (MPGM), which would allow the creation of Espai Barça, or ‘Barça Space’. The

Tennis star Maria Sharapova has joined forces with US sports architect Dan Meis to start a new design venture creating “inspirational” health, fitness, sporting and wellness facilities for the hospitality sector. Inspired, in part, by hotelier Ian Schrager’s boutique hotel revolution, the pair are already in talks to create branded experience-led training venues for hotels, resorts and sports clubs that will help budding and professional athletes reach their peak performance.

The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in the US has completed work on its new Event Center, designed as one of the most advanced college basketball facilities in the country. The all-in-one athletics venue is the new home of the UMBC Retrievers’ men’s and women’s basketball teams and women’s volleyball squad. Designed by architects CannonDesign to be flexible and multi-purpose in nature, the stadium bowl has a capacity of

French football club FC Nantes has revealed the first design sketches for its planned new 40,000-capacity home stadium in western France. US sports architects HKS and French practice Atelier Tom Sheehan & Partenaires (ATSP) have created the concept for the YelloPark Stadium, which includes a fixed roof with a retractable oculus. The traditional horizontally stratified organisation of a stadium will be reinvented to create “a tailor-made experience for each ticket

Work is set to begin on Australia's first surf park, after Urbnsurf – the company driving the plans – secured AU$28.3m (US$18, €15m, £13m) in funding to develop a site in the city of Melbourne. The firm has already secured planning consent for a site adjacent to Melbourne Airport and now expects construction work to begin during April 2018. Described as a "sports, leisure and entertainment facility", Urbnsurf Melbourne will

Populous are working on the largest esports arena in the US – a flexible 100,000sq ft (9,300sq m) venue in the City of Arlington, Virginia. The global sport and entertainment architecture firm are converting the Arlington Convention Center into the Esports Stadium Arlington – a facility designed to draw competitive players and fans from around the world. The City and investment firm Esports Ventures will together invest US$10m (€8m, £7m)

The architect behind Everton FC’s planned new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock in Liverpool has told CLADglobal that his design will “embrace the future of English football without totally forgetting the past” – avoiding the pitfalls that have befallen clubs such as West Ham when moving away from a much-loved home. Dan Meis, founder of Meis Architects, admitted he feels “a huge responsibility” at the task of creating a replacement

Brazilian design studio MMBB Arquitetos and legendary architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha have collaborated on the transformation of a disused tower block in central São Paulo into a vibrant leisure destination for the city. Created for Brazilian non-profit SESC, the 14-storey building, situated on Rua 24 de Maio and Rua Dom José de Barro, has been stripped of several unnecessary elements – including a bankrupt department store at its heart

English football club Fulham FC has announced that its plans to redevelop the Riverside Stand at its Craven Cottage stadium have been approved following a planning hearing at London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Construction work on the new stand, which will raise the overall capacity of Craven Cottage to around 30,000, is set to commence by the summer of 2019. Sports architects Populous are behind the design, which club

Architecture firm FaulknerBrowns have completed a dynamic €50m (US$61m, £44.4m) sports campus in The Hague’s historic Zuiderpark. Open to amateur and elite athletes and community users, the 34,000sq m (366,000sq ft) facility includes a gymnastics hall, beach sports venue, 3,500 capacity arena and a multi-purpose sports hall, as well as a variety of sports science and education spaces, including a public library. Outside, there are a series of multi-use pitches,

The Athens Olympic Park could get a new lease of life, if plans by Greek businessman Dimitris Giannakopoulos are given the green light. Giannokopoulos, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur who currently owns the Panathinaikos basketball club, has tabled a bid to buy the Panathinaikos football club – which is currently owned by Panathinaiki Alliance, a fan group which took over the club in 2012. What makes the deal significant is that, according

English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur has revealed new images of its forthcoming home at White Hart Lane, which it has billed as “the most unique sports and entertainment destination in Europe”. In a move to promote its launch of season ticket sales, of which 42,000 are available, the club has today (12 March) released visualisations of the stadium’s seating bowl, walkways and hospitality facilities. The renderings give a glimpse

Cricket Ireland has confirmed plans to develop a new national cricket stadium west Dublin, just months after the country secured Test status on the international stage. The national governing body has chosen Dublin’s National Sports Campus as the location for the venue. The move is part of a strategy to meet the requirements of future international and domestic first-class cricket in Ireland. Ireland was given full membership of the International

Seattle’s former Key Arena is to undergo a US$600m (€491.7m, £435m) renovation courtesy of architects Populous, in a bid to reposition the facility as the premier sports and entertainment destination in the US northwest. Development firm Oak View Group (OVG) has released renderings illustrating its plans for the venue, which is situated in the Seattle Centre next to the Space Needle. Populous will retain the building’s landmark Paul Thiry-designed roof

Global architecture and design firm Gensler have collaborated with sports giant Reebok to create a new concept transforming gas stations across the US into fitness hubs. The proposal, called Get Pumped, is a long-term vision for adaptive reuse inspired by the rising demand for electric automobiles, which will lessen the demand for gas stations. Gensler have imagined various ways in which these redundant facilities could become community spaces, “where people

The new stadium of English Premier League football side Everton will “break the mould”, according to chief executive Robert Elstone, who pledged the club will ensure its new home is not “predictable and formulaic” like other recently-built grounds. Everton’s long-running quest to build a modern stadium took a major step forward last November after it reached an agreement to lease land for the ground at Bramley Moore Dock in Liverpool.

Gary Sweet, CEO of English League Two football side Luton Town FC (LTFC), has branded delays in a decision over the club’s proposed stadium “unfathomable”. The club submitted a planning application for the 23,000-seat stadium to Luton Borough Council in August 2016, but despite having “answered all the questions” over the scheme, Sweet said the club is still awaiting a decision. “There is very little now we can possibly answer,

Atlantic Wharf in Cardiff has been selected as the preferred site for a new 15,000-seat indoor arena. The planned £110m (US$155m, €124m) venue – which would be capable of hosting sports, cultural, and entertainment events – is now set to be built across two sites in Atlantic Wharf close to the Red Dragon Centre in Cardiff Bay. Cardiff Council, which is driving the project, has identified a large indoor venue

Residents of El Paso, Texas, have been invited to reimagine the future of the city’s abandoned baseball ground, the Cohen Stadium. The City’s Capital Improvement Department and local representative Sam Morgan are backing the masterplan for the 50-acre site in Northeast El Paso, which is hoped will transform the area into a catalyst for development and a destination point for the city and the wider region. The 9,000 capacity venue,

2016 Premier League champion Leicester City Football Club (LCFC) has revealed plans to build a £80m training ground near Loughborough, Leicestershire. The club has acquired 180 acres of land on the site of the former Park Hill Golf Club in Charnwood and the new centre will be designed by architects KSS, who have previously worked on training grounds for Tottenham Hotspur and Brighton and Hove Albion. The centre will include

Sports and leisure specialists FaulknerBrowns Architects have submitted a planning application for a major new indoor snow centre and leisure destination in Swindon, UK. Plans for the destination include a 2,00sq m (21,500sq ft) snow centre featuring two real-snow slopes; a 12-screen cinema with the largest IMAX screen in the UK; a bowling alley; an indoor trampolining centre; a 130-room hotel; and a variety of shops, bars and restaurants. The

The Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) has completed work on a sustainable and inclusive sports-focused youth hostel in Bayreuth, Germany, conceived as a new model of “international, innovative and integrative” design. The distinctively Y-shaped JH Bayreuth is located on a 3,800sq m (40,000sq ft) landscaped site between Bayreuth’s city centre and university. Its expansive grounds feature sports fields, adventure playgrounds, volleyball terraces are gardens. Interior and exterior spaces interweave across

The University of Portsmouth has unveiled ambitious plans for a sustainable sports facility designed by architecture practice FaulknerBrowns. The complex, located on the corner of Portsmouth’s Ravelin Park, is the first major phase of the university’s £400m (US$569m, €455m) estate development masterplan, which aims to reshape its city centre campus to enhance the student experience and establish a public-facing presence in the city centre. The proposals – developed to “promote

Sports architecture firm Populous will design a 365-day stadium for Didier Drogba’s US football franchise Phoneix Rising FC, which has ambitions of joining Major League Soccer (MLS). Local design firm Gould Evans will collaborate on the project, which the club has described as “a world-class venue that serves fans and the broader Phoenix community as a full-scale entertainment destination”. Phoenix Rising FC is co-owned by former Chelsea and Ivory Coast

ACTVENTURE, the multi-million-dollar leisure and lifestyle mega-destination underway on the Sunshine Coast of Australia, is eyeing a rollout to the United Arab Emirates. US practice Thinkwell Group designed the plan for the AU$400m (US$305m, €280.7m, £243m) Queensland venture, with Canadian waterpark specialist WhiteWater West working on the waterpark. Members of ACTVENTURE’s advisory board – including Talal Najibi, executive chair of Najibi Investments, WhiteWater CEO Geoff Chutter, Joe Zenas, CEO of