World Cup: Stadium by stadium
Next week the world’s biggest sporting tournament after the Olympic Games opens in Russia. With seven brand new stadiums and two of the remaining five grounds virtually rebuilt, Ike Ijeh takes a look at the 2018 World Cup venues to see what architectural prowess will be on display
New stadiums
1. Saint Petersburg Stadium, Saint Petersburg
Source: Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 4.0
Completed: 2017
Architect: Kisho Kurokawa
Cost: £1.1bn (estimated)
Capacity: 64,287
Distance from Moscow: 425 miles
Matches: Group stages and semi-final
Not only does the home ground of Zenit Saint Petersburg football club occupy a prominent island site that offers commanding sea views over the Gulf of Finland, it is also said to be one of the most expensive and technologically advanced stadiums ever built. When celebrated Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa won the competition to replace Saint Petersburg’s old Kirov stadium in 2007, he already had World Cup form, having designed Japan’s Oita stadium for the Japan-South Korea 2002 tournament.
Rather oddly, Saint Petersburg’s design is based on that of Kurokawa’s Toyota stadium also in Japan, an unusual pairing considering that Saint Petersburg is President Putin’s home city and he is said to have specifically conceived the new stadium as a symbolic showpiece of Russian might. Conceptual recycling aside, the stadium’s sliding pitch, retractable roof and snow-melting, hot air-inflated membrane structure are impressive feats. As is its distinctive “saucer” bowl punctured by inclined masts, all based on Kurokawa’s “Spaceship” concept.
None of this came without stratospheric levels of cost and controversy: when the original 2008 completion date was missed, initial funders Gazprom pulled out and switched their attentions to the infamous and even more controversial Gazprom Tower proposals in the historic centre of the city.
Costs also soared from an initial budget of £190m and the project was blighted by delays that lasted a decade. Nevertheless, the venue’s hitch-free hosting of last year’s Fifa’s Confederation Cup bodes well for this month’s tournament.
2. Mordovia Arena, Saransk
Source: Shutterstock.com / Igor Drondin
Completed: 2018
Architect: SaranskGrazhdanProekt
Cost: £225m
Capacity: 44,442
Distance from Moscow: 400 miles
Matches: Group stages
Fifa’s controversial selection of Russia and Qatar for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups is already well documented. Less well known is the strange tale of how one of Russia’s new stadium designs looks largely identical to another stadium built for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
With its distinctive earthenware mosaic facade inspired by an African calabash pot, Johannesburg’s FNB stadium was one of the architectural highlights of the 2010 tournament. It now seems to have made an unscheduled reappearance in the Volga Basin in the shape of Mordovia Arena which, too, has a pixelated “earthenware” facade with a flattened bulge profile.
While a member of the architectural team appointed to ensure the Russia venues comply with Fifa design rules remarked that the two stadiums looked “very, very much alike”, the Russian 2018 World Cup directorate dismissed it as “no more than an accidental coincidence.”
The denial may attain more credibility after the World Cup when the upper tiers are dismantled and capacity is reduced to 28,000, almost 70,000 less than FNB.
3. Samara Arena, Samara
Source: Shutterstock.com / FotograFFF
Completed: 2018
Architect: GMP-Architekten
Cost: £240m
Capacity: 44,807
Distance from Moscow: 655 miles
Matches: Group stages and quarter-final
While Saint Petersburg stadium is based on the concept of a spaceship, of all the Russia World Cup venues it is Samara Arena that looks the most galactically inspired. The spectacular design sees a mesh of curving steel girders rising from the ground to form a 65m-high dome. The dome’s surface is divided into 32 segments, each of them covered in shimmering translucent panels to resemble a giant glass gemstone that glows ethereally at night. The dome covers the entire pitch and seating bowl, save for an irregular opening at the centre, conceived as an asteroid crater.
The space references are not accidental; Samara is revered by Russians as the historic home of their space programme. And as with all World Cup and Olympic venues, naming conventions are suspended for the duration of the tournament. So after the World Cup the stadium will revert to its usual name of Cosmos Arena, so called because of its asteroid-inspired design.
4. Kaliningrad stadium, Kaliningrad
Source: Anton Gvozdikov
Completed: 2018
Architect: Wilmotte & Associés
Cost: £227m
Capacity: 35,212
Distance from Moscow: 770 miles
Matches: Group stages (hosting England vs Belgium)
Like many Russia 2018 venues, this stadium is situated by a river – which perhaps makes its resemblance to a 1980s word processor all the more unsettling. The monochrome aluminium strips encircling the facade stand at odds with its picturesque setting. But they are supposed to represent the pioneering technological features incorporated into the stadium, which include state-of-the-art surveillance and security facilities. They do not, however, detract from the stadium’s largely functional aesthetics.
As with many venues, initially ambitious plans were scaled back due to spiralling costs. The stadium was originally designed with a retractable roof and surrounding infrastructure but these were abandoned partly as a result of the wetland grass on which the structure is built, requiring significant piling reinforcement.
Multi-disciplinary French practice Wilmotte was the architect, with a design loosely based on its Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice, itself built for the Euro 2016 Uefa Championships.
5. Volgograd Arena, Volgograd
Source: Shutterstock.com / Oleg Dimitrov
Completed: 2018
Architect: Project Institute Arena
Cost: £208m
Capacity: 45,568
Distance from Moscow: 585 miles
Matches: Group stages (hosting England vs Tunisia)
One of the more visually striking stadiums built for the Russia World Cup, Volgograd Arena channels the seminal spirit of Herzog & de Meuron’s 2008 Beijing Olympic stadium by being wrapped in an extraordinary open steel latticework loosely based on the concept of a firework display. While the arrangement is infinitely more rational than Beijing’s and is essentially a cross-braced circular cage with straight rather than curved secondary members spanning between the mainframe, the effect is still spectacular, particularly at night when the stadium glows like semi-permeable veil.
The composition is completed by a roof supported by an array of cables that are designed to resemble the spokes of a bicycle wheel. These are also intended to mimic the airiness and perforations of the facade. The building required the demolition of Volgograd’s former 1958 Central stadium built on the same site.
6. Rostov Arena, Rostov-on-Don
Source: Svetlana Beketova
Completed: 2018
Architect: Populous
Cost: £247m
Capacity: 45,145
Distance from Moscow: 690 miles
Matches: Group stages
Rostov Arena is one of three Russia 2018 World Cup stadiums designed by stadium veteran Populous, designer of London’s former Olympic stadium and the Arenas das Dunas in Natal which was built for the 2014 Brazil World Cup. Spiralling costs meant this stadium was probably altered more than any other venue between concept and completion. Initial plans revealed an extraordinary double-boomerang shaped structure inspired by ancient earthworks and with an outer facade surrounded by tiers of generous terraces. The completed design is rather more conventional, with a rectangular bowl now topped with an arching, tensile roof structure supported by masthead trusses. Despite the savage downgrade, the new design allegedly only cost 15% less than the original.
