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

David Beckham has launched his long-awaited Major League Soccer team in Miami today (29 January). The former England captain had exercised an option in his contract with former side LA Galaxy to buy an expansion franchise in 2014. The team, which has yet to be named, will play at a new 25,000-seat stadium in the city's Overton neighbourhood. Designed by sports architects Populous, the ground will be lighter and airier

One of the Asia Pacific’s most flexible stadiums will open this Sunday (19 January) in Perth, Australia, with an open day welcoming fans into the 60,000 capacity landmark. The AU$1.6bn (US$1.2bn. €1bn, £925m) Optus Stadium – collaboratively designed by architecture firms Hassell, Cox and HKS – is owned by the state of Western Australia and can accommodate athletics, cricket, football, Australian rules football, rugby league and union, and huge concerts

Kengo Kuma’s extensive pipeline of public projects just got even longer, with his firm winning an international competition to design an aquatics centre on an artificial quay in Copenhagen’s harbour. The municipality has selected Kengo Kuma Associates to create the 5,000sq m (53,800sq ft) Danish Water Culture Center, ahead of four other shortlisted teams – BIG, 3XN Architects, AART Architects and ALA Architects. The project will be built on Christiansholm

The £1bn ($1.38bn, €1.12bn) project to rebuild Chelsea Football Club’s Stamford Bridge stadium in London has overcome its final hurdle, after a motion was passed preventing a local family from blocking the proposed plans. The Crosthwaite family, whose house is the closest residence to the ground, took out an injunction under their ‘right to light’, stating that a redeveloped East Stand would restrict daylight coming into their home. But at

Bath Rugby moved a step closer to its new home as the Stadium for Bath project confirmed Grimshaw as lead architect. The project brings together Bath Rugby, Bath Rugby Foundation and Arena 1865 to develop the new stadium in the City of Bath, a certified UNESCO World Heritage Site. Globally renowned architecture firm Grimshaw will begin developing designs for the 18,000-capacity stadium, which will replace Bath Rugby’s facilities at the

A hub for recreational sports, wellness and civic engagement has opened in St Louis, Missouri, using a design that shelters it from an interstate highway. Architecture and engineering firm CannonDesign were tasked with creating the new home for the Maryland Heights Community Center to replace a facility no longer fit-for-purpose. The brief called for a destination centre for the community of Maryland Heights, offering a variety of uses and preserving

Danish landscape architects SLA have revealed their final design drawings for the rooftop park set to adorn Bjarke Ingels Group’s (BIG) forthcoming Amager Resource Center – one of the most-anticipated buildings of 2018. The centre, located in an industrial area of Copenhagen, is a waste-to-energy plant with unique public offerings – including a climbing wall on one facade and a 500m+ ski slope down its descending roof. Both the slope

Proposals for an open water surf sports lagoon at Sydney Olympic Park have been given the green light by planning chiefs. The artificial wave park – located 25km from the ocean – has been designed by architects MJA Studio in collaboration with the WavePark Group, which will operate the site under its URBN Surf banner. The duo are already developing similar parks in Perth and Melbourne, with each site set

Design studio 4a Architekten have completed an aquatics centre embedded into the landscape of the Offenburg Citizens’ Park in the south of Germany. The design of the Stegermatt Centre is characterised by the interplay of architecture and landscape, with expansive roof surfaces, spacious glass façades and atmospheric spatial volumes interlocking with the natural surroundings to emphasise the contrast between the man-made and the natural. The building is divided architecturally into

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects (SHL) have been commissioned to design a sports and culture campus in Aarhus, Denmark The multi-use community project is a core component of the revitalisation of the city’s western Gellerup district, with local leaders committed to delivering “an inspiring, welcoming and open destination” for residents and 600,000 visitors annually. The sprawling Gellerup Sports and Culture Campus will include an ‘activity house’ for football; climbing and circus

Birmingham is set to be officially announced as the host of the 2022 Commonwealth Games tomorrow (21 December). Multiple reports state a deal between the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), the DCMS and Birmingham City Council has been struck, with a press conference scheduled tomorrow at Perry Bar to be attended by CGF President Louise Martin. Birmingham was the only interested city to submit a bid before the original deadline of

An international cricket stadium built using local materials and sustainable building practices has opened in Rwanda, with a design inspired by a bouncing ball and the country’s rolling hills. Cricket is Rwanda’s fastest growing sport and has been used as a tool to bring people together in the country, which was torn apart by genocide in 1994. To accommodate the growing demand and the counter the lack of purpose-built facilities,

The Rugby Football Union (RFU) has named Manchester-based firm Mather and Co to design its new World Rugby Museum at the spiritual home of the sport – Twickenham Stadium. Scheduled to open in early 2018, the new attraction was commissioned by the RFU as part of the redevelopment of the 82,000-capacity stadium’s East Stand. The museum will cover 650sq m (7,000sq m) and will chart the history of rugby from

Designs for a new stand at Sheffield United will celebrate the city’s steel industry, the English football club has revealed. Plans are in place to add more than 5,400 seats to the second tier of Bramall Lane’s South Stand, as well as new executive boxes and a media centre. Designs by local architects Whittam Cox will celebrate the exposed steelwork supporting the cantilever roof from above, using high-quality profiled steel

English football club AFC Wimbledon will begin building a new stadium at Plough Lane after reaching an agreement with Merton Council. The original Wimbledon FC had to leave Plough Lane in 1991 after the Taylor Report – undertaken in the wake of the Hillsborough tragedy – meant top-flight sides had to play in all-seater stadiums. The stadium was turned into residential space but now a new development at Plough Lane,

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) have revealed their latest major US project – a sports and entertainment neighbourhood in Texas under a dramatic chequered roofscape. Ambitious plans for the 1.3 million sq ft (121,000sq m) East Austin District were announced today (5 December) by Austin Sports & Entertainment, founded by sports media executives Andrew Nestor and Sean Foley. Located at the home of rodeo in Austin, the new complex is described

English Premier League football club Crystal Palace has announced ambitious plans to redevelop its Selhurst Park stadium. Club chairman Steve Parish unveiled the project at a press conference yesterday (4 December), in which sports architects KSS were revealed as the practice tasked with overhauling a stadium which has been Palace’s home since 1924. The firm has previously redeveloped sports facilities including Anfield, Twickenham and Wimbledon. The project, expected to cost

Fulham Football Club has submitted an application to the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham Council for the redevelopment of the Riverside Stand at its historic Craven Cottage home. New renderings released by Populous show how the stand has been designed with “an iconic roof design” to better connect with the river. Sports architects Populous are behind the proposals, which club chair Shahid Khan claims will “transcend the customary standards