The winners of The Structural Awards 2016 were announced on 11 November during a ceremony held at The Brewery in London, with several leisure projects celebrated for their design and engineering excellence. The Grandview Heights Aquatic Centre in Surrey, Canada was honoured with The Supreme Award for Structural Engineering Excellence – one of the highest accolades in world engineering – for featuring the world’s most slender, long span timber catenary

Residents of Scottish capital city Edinburgh are being asked to have their say on an ambitious rebuild of the existing Meadowbank Stadium and Sport Centre. The City of Edinburgh Council will submit a planning application early next year for the redevelopment, which is expected to cost in the region of £40m (US$50.5m, €46.4m) and is being designed by Glasgow architects Holmes Miller. Among the proposals for the complex are: an

Spanish football club Valencia CF will unveil a new design for its long-awaited stadium development in “six to nine months”. Chan Lay Hoon, the club’s president, told a shareholders meeting that while the new stadium would not be built in time for Valencia’s centenary in 2019, plans would surface within the year. He added that he expected the venue to be complete by 2020. The development of the stadium has

French football giant Paris Saint Germain (PSG) is on the hunt for an architect to design a new training centre, expected to be among the best in the world once completed. The reigning Ligue 1 champion has purchased a 740,000sq m (8 million sq ft) site in Poissy, Greater Paris to build the facility, which will include 14 football pitches. The centre will be the home to a 5,000-capacity stadium,

Following a seven-month international competition, English football club Forest Green Rovers has selected Zaha Hadid Architects to design its new football stadium. The studio will build the ground completely out of wood, with the aim of making it “the greenest football stadium in the world.” The stadium will be the centrepiece of the £100m (US$124.5m, €112.3m) Eco Park development in Gloucestershire – a 100 acre sports and green technology business

UPDATE: David Edmonds, the chair of Olympic Stadium operators the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), has resigned from his role amid mounting pressure over the spiralling costs of converting the venue into a football ground for West Ham United. Two days ago the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, launched an investigation into the cost of the project, which has risen to around £750m – much higher than originally projected. Edmonds,

Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium will have the ability to accommodate safe-standing, and will include an exclusive ‘tunnel bar’ in which fans will be able to see the players come out onto the pitch. Darren Baldwin, the club’s head of playing surface and estates, lifted the lid on plans for the ambitious 61,000-capacity stadium during an address at the Saltex Convention in Birmingham on 2 November. Baldwin revealed that the Populous-designed

The construction of Qatar’s Al Rayyan Stadium, a proposed host venue of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, has entered a new phase after the first concrete was poured at the location of the stadium’s West Stand. The milestone means the project, designed by architecture studio Ramboll and Pattern, is now five weeks ahead of schedule. As well as being a World Cup venue, it will also serve as the new

Newmarket’s £14m (US$17.1m, €15.7m) UK National Horse Racing Museum has opened to the public more than 25 years on from its original inception. Celebrating more than 350 years of sporting history, exhibition designers Mather & Co are behind the plans, which gained Heritage Lottery funding in 2012 worth £4.25m (US$5.1m, €4.7m), with funding also coming from Forest Heath (£1.3m), Suffolk County Council (£1m), the Wellcome Trust and a number of

New designs for the controversial Casement Park development in Belfast have been unveiled after opposition from local residents halted original plans. Ulster Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) has put forward designs for a reduced size arena to quell concerns raised by locals about the quality of their lives being impacted on matchdays. The body has also put forward a “sustainable transport strategy”, which includes coach travel and park-and-ride options, to improve

Professionals involved in the development of sporting arenas should investigate the merits of technology such as augmented reality and virtual reality in terms of how they could enhance the spectator experience. That is the view of Pascal Vuilliomenet, vice president for innovation and technology transfer at the EPFL Research institute in Switzerland and co-curator of the Olympic Museum’s new exhibition on past, present and future stadium design. "We can project

Footballing trio Rio Ferdinand, Mark Noble and Bobby Zamora have launched an innovative urban regeneration model designed to use sport and leisure to bring new life to communities. The Legacy Foundation was formed to build new developments in the UK with high-quality social, affordable, rented and privately-owned homes. Community and sporting facilities are central to the project and are the main hook to raise aspirations, wellbeing and quality of life

Olympic stadiums and facilities should be protected with their own cultural heritage listing, a leading member of the International Association for Sport and Leisure Facilities (IAKS) has argued. Speaking at the Olympic Museum’s new stadium design exhibition in Lausanne, Dr Miranda Kiuri, who is also an architect and researcher at the University of Liege, called on UNESCO to introduce a new listing category for stadiums that have a strong cultural,

The design and engineering of Olympic stadiums is the focus of a temporary exhibition opening today (13 October) at The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Stadiums: Past and Future explores the facilities cities have built to host the Games – from the Olympia in Ancient Greece through to modern architectural icons such as Frei Otto’s Munich Olympic Stadium and Herzog and de Meuron’s Bird’s Nest in Beijing. Curated by Geraint

Spanish football giant Real Madrid has agreed a deal with the local council to redevelop its Santiago Bernabeu stadium, and the surrounding area. The La Liga club’s president Florentino Perez made the announcement alongside mayor of Madrid Manuela Carmena, delegate of sustainable urban development Jose Manuel Calvo and council president of Madrid’s Chamartin district Mauricio Valiente. Last December, Calvo’s department blocked the €440m (£398.4m, US$486.8m) development proposal in “the interests

Four design companies have been shortlisted from a field of 17 international and national firms in the race to create the AU$250m North Queensland Stadium in Townsville, Australia. BVN Architecture, Cox Architecture, Hassell and Populous will now vie for the project, with each studio asked to develop a concept design and masterplan for the project. “The four companies have all demonstrated a proven track record in major sports stadiums,” said

Dutch architects MVRDV have won an international competition to design a sports and cultural complex in Shenzhen, China, which will be navigated via a weaving elevated walkway. The Nanshan district government has tasked the studio, and local firm Zhubo Architecture Design, with creating “a social and well­being focal point” for the community in the country’s fastest-growing urban region. Located in a residential area which stretches between two mountain parks, the

A funding campaign to build a self-sustaining cricket ground of international standard in Rwanda is gathering momentum. Cricket is Rwanda’s fastest growing sport and has been used as a tool in recent years to bring people together in the country, which was torn apart by genocide in 1994. Despite the burgeoning interest, there are a lack of cricketing facilities in the country, and so the Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation (RCSF)

The French Tennis Federation (FTF) has described itself as "outraged" after a court suspended the development of a new stadium at Roland Garros just days after the project had been given the green light. While the French Council of State cancelled suspension of the construction work that had been implemented earlier on in the year, a different court – Tribunal de Grande Instance – has taken an alternative view and

US National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise the Washington Wizards is creating a new training facility that will double as a concert venue and events arena. While competing teams in Brooklyn, Chicago and Toronto have previously merged practice venues with residential accommodation, the Washington team claims it is the first in the NBA to actively create a mixed-use leisure facility. According to The Washington Post, the plans outlined by the Wizards

The Japanese government has approved a 150bn yen ($1.5bn, €1.3bn, £1.1bn) contract allowing work to begin on Kengo Kuma’s 2020 Tokyo Olympic Stadium. Construction is scheduled to begin in December. The government-funded Japan Sport Council (JSC), which is overseeing the project, estimates that construction will be completed at the end of November 2019 – five months behind the original schedule. New Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said she would closely monitor

A senior executive at Spanish football club Atletico Madrid has lifted the lid on progress being made on its new 66,000-capacity stadium, which will include a fanzone, museum and videomapping facade. Javier Martinez, the club’s managing director, global business development, said he wanted the stadium to be among the “top five experiences” in terms of football stadiums in Europe. He gave delegates at the Soccerex Global Convention in Manchester a

Stadiums and arenas built for events such as the FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games should all be temporary, according to South African architect Ruben Reddy. Talking at the Soccerex Global Convention in Manchester, Reddy told delegates that the structures should be designed so that they can be deconstructed and the materials used to create other civic buildings such as hospitals and school. He used his native South Africa as

The new California home of US National Basketball Association franchise the Sacramento Kings has become the first indoor sports venue to achieve LEED Platinum certification. The US$507m (£336m, €476m) Golden 1 Center, which will host its first preseason fixture on 10 October, is the highest-scoring stadium ever certified by the US Green Building Council – the body that oversees the LEED system. It is also among the top three per

British football club Everton is working with US design firm Meis Architects to create a vision for a proposed new stadium. Meis Architects founder Dan Meis told CLAD that the studio was working with the Premier League club, but couldn't comment further on the plans at this early stage of the project. The Liverpool-based club has long made clear its wish to relocate from its current home at Goodison Park

Golf course architect Tom Doak has designed “North America’s first reversible course” for the Forest Dunes resort in Michigan. Called The Loop, Doak’s design features two distinct layouts that use the same 18 greens and fairways. Players move clockwise on one day, and counterclockwise the next. The course – developed on a relatively flat, sand-based stretch of land to the west of the resort’s pre-existing course – is due to

A group of Japanese architects, including Fumihiko Maki and Kengo Kuma, are petitioning UNESCO to recognise the gymnasium building designed by Kenzo Tange for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics on its World Cultural Heritage list. The high-profile team today (21 September) launched a campaign to have the Yoyogi National Gymnasium listed before the Olympics return to Tokyo in 2020. The facility – which hosted swimming, diving and basketball events at the