The New South Wales (NSW) government has confirmed plans to undertake an ambitious AS$1.6bn (£870.4m, US$1.2bn, €1.1bn) stadium strategy in Sydney which will see three grounds altered or rebuilt. As part of the proposals, which were unveiled by NSW premier Mike Baird, the Populous-designed Olympic Stadium – now called the ANZ Stadium – will be downsized from a 83,500-capacity venue to a 70,000-seat stadium and reconfigured as a rectangle football

Proposals to build a £92m (US$130.4m, €115.8m) Populous-designed Bristol Arena have been given the green light by the city council. The 12,000-capacity multi-use arena is now set to be built on the site of the former diesel depot close to Temple Meads train station. Bristol City Council accepted the application – put forward by Bristol Temple Quarter – after requesting more information on transportation plans and infrastructure around the arena.

US National Football League (NFL) franchise the Miami Dolphins is racing to complete a US$450m renovation of its stadium before pre-season begins in August 2016. The club is working with sports architects HOK to construct a new open-air rooftop canopy, which is designed to amplify crowd noise and cast 92 per cent of fans in shade from the fierce south Florida heat. The square roof will be supported by distinctive

Sports architecture firm HOK have designed a “first-of-its-kind” training and sports medicine centre for National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise the Atlanta Hawks. The privately-funded facility will be the first NBA training centre to be co-located with a sports medicine centre, which will home Emory Healthcare. Emory will have the naming rights to the 90,000 sq ft (8,361sq m) facility, which will be built in the Brookhaven region of Atlanta. Ground

Construction will begin in the next few months on Australia’s first man-made surf park after planning approval was granted for the Melbourne project. Perth-based company Wave Park Group has partnered with architects MJA Studios – who recently unveiled their plan to transform an abandoned sports stadium into an enormous outdoor wave pool near Perth – for the facility, which will be called Urbnsurf. “Surfing is a sport enjoyed by millions

Besiktas – one of the best supported football clubs in Turkey – has opened the doors to its new 42,000-capacity stadium. The €110m (£88.2m, US$125.2m) Vodafone Arena was unveiled by the club alongside Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu and former president Abdullah Gul last night (10 April). Turkish firm DBArchitects designed the Vodafone Arena alongside local architect Metin Demir. After playing home matches around the country

Sports and entertainment architecture studio Populous – designers of the London 2012 Olympic Stadium – will advise on venue design for Paris’ 2024 Olympic bid. The firm will collaborate with international engineering firm Egis to draw up plans for 38 Olympic and Paralympic facilities. Together, they will design new permanent and temporary buildings and ensure existing venues in the French capital are ready for the scale and needs of Olympic

Italian Serie B football club Cagliari has been given the green light to build a new 21,000-capacity stadium, designed by Polish architectural studio JSK Architekci. Yesterday (6 April), Cagliari City Council approved the declaration of public interest for the proposal which will see a new ground constructed in the Sardinian city by 2019. The club is ploughing €55m (£44.5m, US$62.6m) into the project and is hoping to sell the stadium’s

The New York office of international architecture studio OMA has unveiled two masterplan concepts to renew a vast sports and cultural complex in Washington D.C. The 190-acre RFK Stadium-Armory Campus would be located in the Southeast corridor of the District of Columbia, on a site which currently houses the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. Events DC, the official convention and sports authority for the District of Columbia, is overseeing the

For their latest project – a 20,000-capacity indoor multipurpose arena – global architects Populous had to “out-Vegas Las Vegas.” That’s the view of studio principal Kurt Amundsen, who has talked in detail about the creation of the high-profile T-Mobile Arena, which opens to the public in the US city on Wednesday (6 April). The US$375m (€329.5m, £263m) venue will become the region's largest indoor sports and entertainment venue and has

Architects are being invited to submit “sustainable” stadium plans in a competition to design a new ground for non-league English football club Forest Green Rovers. The new stadium will be part of a £100m (US$142m, €124.9m) development – called Eco Park – which is a 100-acre sports and green technology business park which is being proposed for a site in Gloucestershire. Forest Green Rovers owner and chair Dales Vince, who

The philosophy of feng shui has inspired an Issy les Moulineaux-based swimming pool, sports and wellbeing centre designed by French architecture practice Mikou Studio. The centre, located in the southern suburbs of Paris and known as Piscine du Fort, is clad in an wave-like double skin, with open and accessible façades that use rounded windows and skylights to filter in daylight. Design features are carefully positioned to create a sense

Moody Nolan – experts in collegiate sport architecture – have been chosen to lead the design for a mixed-use on-campus football stadium for Temple University in Philadelphia. The stadio which was founded by president and chief executive Curtis J Moody has worked on more than 100 university projects, including sports facilities for DePaul, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt. Working in collaboration with AECOM, Moody

A monumental turreted armoury in New York borough the Bronx could be transformed into the world's largest indoor ice rink complex, if funding can be raised for the project. According to US publication Politico New York, the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which owns the site, has given a consortium led by Canadian ice hockey legend Mark Messier a month to produce US$138m (€121m, £96m) for the project’s first phase.

The new Populous-designed home of Major League Baseball (MLB) team Atlanta Braves will boast a zip line across its concourse, according to reports in the US city. Derek Schiller, the franchise’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, confirmed the attraction for the forthcoming SunTrust Park while speaking at a Business of Sports Summit in Atlanta, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The zip line would begin from behind the

Populous – the architects behind the London 2012 Olympic Stadium – have appointed ex-Informa chief executive Peter Rigby as co-chair. Rigby joins existing chair Rod Sheard, who is the founder of the studio, in overseeing its business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He spent 30 years at the multinational in a leadership capacity. During his tenure, the company increased its market capitalisation to £3bn (US$4.3bn, €3.8bn). In

Dutch football club Feyenoord has pinpointed a preferred site for its new stadium and surrounding complex. Working with architects OMA, financial advisors First Dutch and infrastructure expert Operatie NL, the 14-time Dutch champions have developed the concept for the Feyenoord City development, which will include the stadium, shops, houses, offices, hotels, cultural spaces and the new premises of the football club. Feyenoord and the Municipality of Rotterdam have chosen the

One of the lead architects behind the New Palau Blaugrana – a multi-sports and concert arena for FC Barcelona’s €600m Espai Barca district – has told CLAD how the venue's design will generate activity for 365 days a year. In an exclusive interview, John Rhodes, director of sports architects HOK and a lead designer on the Barcelona project, revealed how the design will bring traditional amenities, such as bars and

Qatar may accommodate thousands of fans in Bedouin-style tents in the desert after declining oil prices have forced the nation to rethink projects including the building of hotels. In the lead-up to its successful World Cup 2022 bid in 2010, officials from the Gulf state said it would build 55,000 hotel rooms to house supporters, however that has now been altered to 46,000 rooms following the dent in its oil-dependent

Milwaukee Bucks – the National Basketball Association (NBA) Eastern Conference franchise – has unveiled detailed plans and renderings of its proposed US$500m (£334.8m, €443.1m) arena. Plans for the Populous-designed arena have been submitted to the city council with a view to beginning construction this summer. The arena, which is being funded by US$250m (£172.4m, €221.6m) of taxpayers’ money, is poised to open its doors for the 2018/19 season. If the

National Football League (NFL) franchise Minnesota Vikings has put forward a proposal to build new headquarters with training facilities and a 6,000-capacity stadium. The stadium – which can be expanded to 10,000 seats – would be used for team training, as well as providing a space for public events, athletics and high school sports such as soccer and lacrosse. Vikings officials are additionally looking at the possibility of placing a

After months of speculation, National Football League (NFL) franchise the Washington Redskins has finally confirmed architects Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) will design its new home, and unveiled the first details of the project. Described by the Redskins as “a new stadium concept”, BIG’s creation – a transparent wave-like structure wrapped in a golden metal mesh – is designed with a particular focus on how it will be used on non-match

Guy Holloway Architects look set to develop the world’s first multi-storey skatepark in the British port town of Folkestone after their design received planning approval from the district council. Following a series of public consultations in Q1 2015, detailed proposals were developed by the architects and skatepark design consultancy Maverick for an urban sports facility. That vision has now been unanimously approved by planning committee members at Shepway District Council.

Danish studio Henning Larsen Architects have been commissioned to create a special cultural pavilion in Rio de Janeiro to celebrate the 2016 Olympic Games. The public pavilion will be located on the world-famous Ipanema Beach with the statue of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain providing a dramatic backdrop. The 300sq m (3,200sq ft) installation is intended to provide a destination for cultural exchange between Denmark and Brazil for the

FC Barcelona has announced that Japanese architects Nikken Sekkei and Spanish studio Pascual i Ausió Arquitectes have won the hotly-contested tender to design the new Camp Nou, following a final meeting of the judges today (8 March). The jury – made up of five FC Barcelona members, three members from the Catalunya’s architecture association and a city council representative – praised the winning proposal as “open, elegant, serene, timeless, Mediterranean

A BMX and skate park has opened within an old Victorian bathing house beneath the seafront in the British town of Hastings. Source Park is formed of a main park, a plaza and a skating shop in the 1870s White Rock Baths building, which once housed the town’s Turkish Baths and smoking rooms – a popular destination for the country’s first seaside tourists. Since the baths closed, the building has,

FC Barcelona has unveiled new images and a video for the New Palau Blaugrana – a multi-sports and concert arena created by US sports architects HOK and Spanish practice TAC Arquitectes. The highly flexible complex will comprise three areas that can operate independently: a 10,000-seat arena, an auxiliary court for 2,000 spectators, an ice rink with room for 800 spectators and a campus for the club’s football academy, FCB Escola.