By Paul Nicholson, Lusail City, Qatar
December 16 – They promised amazing and that is what we are going to get. Qatar got down to the real business of World Club football this weekend with the launch of the design of its showpiece Lusail Stadium. Qatar 2022 is well and truly off the starting grid and setting a spectacular pace.
‘Amazing’ and ‘spectacular’ in the same opening paragraph in a story about Qatar – really!
Following a week where FIFA president Gianni Infantino had ‘hosted’ a FIFA Summit event and then left his hosts with the somewhat graceless parting gift of more 48-team World Cup talk, a visit to the construction site of the Lusail Stadium was an exciting and invigorating reminder of what World Cup football is about.
The 80,000 capacity Lusail Stadium will host the opening match and final of the World Cup, and a number of games inbetween. It is part of the similarly ambitious 270,000-person Lusail City construction project – the creation of a whole new metropolitan area.
Lusail Stadium as it is now
How Lusail City and Stadium will look on completion
It is a city and stadium project like no other World Cup has ever seen.
Tamim Al-Abed (top picture far right), project manager for the Lusail Stadium, standing in the middle of the stadium that is rapidly taking shape around him, is well aware of the scale and importance of what is being built.
“This is the most talked about tournament in the history of World Cup football,” he said. “Plain old hard work and the contribution of our workers makes all this possible.”
Lusail Stadium is an 80,000 capacity venue that is being built as a joint venture between Qatari contractor HBK Contracting and China Railway Construction Corporation. The stadium concept has been designed by Foster + Partners.
“We started the build in 2016 and we are now half way through,” said Al-Abed. “We are at the infrastructure stage but we will be complete in 2020… This is a challenging design architecturally. We are building for a stadium population of 90,000 with state of the art facilities and connectivity.”
With the 24th, and final, main concrete structural column to support the stadium façade having now been poured, the stadium is literally growing out of the desert.
The concrete superstructure works are progressing to create the bowl and have now reached the fifth and sixth floors in the east and west sides respectively. This is closing in on the half way point for the stadium that will eventually top out at 74.5m high, hold 53 Sky boxes and hundreds of other categories of stadium use requirements.
World Cup stadia become iconic football monuments once they have hosted a final, if they weren’t already. Lusail Stadium will follow in the tradition but its biggest point of difference will be its post-World Cup transformation into a multi-purpose community hub incorporating schools, shops, cafés, sports facilities and health clinics. More than 60,000 of the stadium’s modular seats will be removed and donated to sporting projects worldwide.
Qatar Supreme Committee Secretary General, Hassan Al Thawadi, said: “The Lusail Stadium talks to the essence of Qatar. It reflects our culture and our heritage, as well as provides a legacy. Its utilisation after the World Cup is important. We will not be leaving any white elephants.”
Stadium spawns a city
If the Lusail Stadium was not an ambitious enough project, the concept of building a city around it is something truly out of the future.
Located 15km north of central Doha, Lusail City is pioneering in every sense of the word. This isn’t a project that it is building on an existing community, it is a project that is building a brand new metropolitan area where there was nothing before. Its guiding construction principles are based on sustainable development and environmental conservation.
“The result will be a city where more than 200,000 people live in harmony with the environment – and enjoy the legacy of this spectacular stadium,” says a Qatari press release. A football-inspired utopia? Certainly it is visionary and a drive through the fast developing city – 90% of its infrastructure is now said to be complete – confirms that this has very much moved from vision to reality.
Lusail City is the biggest single development project ever to be undertaken in Qatar. It has a target of 270,000 residents and more than 65,000 dwellings. But this is not about building a dormitory city for workers to commute to downtown Doha. Lusail City will live and breathe in its own right.
Residential property will make up 55% of the development, 24% will be mixed use and hospitality, 16% office and retail and 5% civic and other use.
Key facilities will include 35 hotels, 37 healthcare units, including four hospitals, new schools, mosques, sporting facilities, entertainment options and shopping centres, a marina with 1,200 berths and a residential golf development. All served by the Lusail tram which will be 21km in length and have 28 stations.
One of which will stop at a great big iconic football stadium.
Now that really is amazing.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1734983450labto1734983450ofdlr1734983450owedi1734983450sni@n1734983450osloh1734983450cin.l1734983450uap1734983450