Bring a surfboard to BIG’s new Redskins stadium
And your skates in winter, all thanks to a new plan to add watersports to this Washington football facility
Are sports stadiums with surf facilities becoming the latest thing? Last November we reported on the designs to transform Perth’s Subiaco Oval – western Australia’s largest stadium – into a mixed-use complex, complete with artificial, surfable waves.
Was the super-hot architect Bjarke Ingels’ surfing our site? The newly unveiled plans for the Washington Redskin’s new home, drawn-up by Ingels’ practice BIG, also feature a stretch of water, replete with manmade breakers.
The moat in BIG’s plans also serves as a natural barrier between the stadium and its surrounding parkland. BIG’s design features multi-level parking embedded into the sport faclity’s park, offering visitors a pleasant spot to hold pre-game tailgate parties, as well as stress-free landscapes through which they can wander from parked cars to tiered seats.
In the winter the moat will be used as an ice-staking rink, while in the summer it will be turned into a water-sports facility, with manmade wave pool for surfers and a river run for kayakers. While the football team is backing BIG's plans, the site and proposed opening date for this facility have yet to be determined. Surf isn't quite up in DC, yet. . .
For more on this go here; for more on contemporary landscaping get 30:30 Landscape Architecture; and for greater insight into contemporary architecture on a smaller scale take a look at Nanotecture.