London Stadium Density

Position: 1+3

Through a focus on developing design tools that directly translate index and feedback data into tectonic form, architecture becomes a medium for creating continuity between spectator and event.


The power of form-finding algorithms already employed to organize social networks, manage databases and model biologic conditions needs to activate new architectural techniques. Negotiating the boundaries of site, program, and physics inherent to a stadium in southwest London provides extensive and intensive sources that must be related and structured. A commitment to creating input –sensitive software and code ties the design of a stadium typology to local and transient information and self-stopping and optimizing methods.

Two Recent Stadiums

Here are two very recent compitetion winners for other stadiums around the world:

The 2014 Olympic Stadium in Sochi, Russia, by stadium design behemoth Populous.

UN Studio's Dalian Football Stadium in China:

Note the context of these facilities.

Exploded Axon 1.1

Pedestrian Flow 1.0

London Stadium Comparison

1 [and] 3 [and] 9

Expanding  the Cottage:  Processing a New Riverside Stand

  The power of form-finding algorithms already employed to organize social networks, manage databases and model biologic processes needs to activate new architectural techniques. Negotiating the boundaries of site, program, and physics inherent to a stadium in southwest London provides myriad input that must be related and structured. A simultaneous feeding-back of data across scales can produce a space more directly engaged with the experience of the spectator.
 
    Increasing the capacity of Craven Cottage presents an opportunity for the stadium to address site conditions, connect with the surrounding community, and provide additional facilities for the club. The funneling of pedestrians from transportation centers and pubs, through the adjacent neighborhood and park, and to the turnstiles can be re-organized by examining flow-paths and disruptions. Blurring the line between stadium and community allows for additional functions to activate the ground and connect to the river. Exploring the performance of seating configurations and enclosure creates new formal
potentials. While these issues may seem disparate, a process led by feedback and simultaneous calculation will expose hybrid solutions. In order to "repair the rift between the materiality of tectonic structure and the sensuousness of human experience"(1), the success of these solutions relies on the algorithm’s ability for self-similar and self-stopping transformations. Fractals, branching, and other self-similar forms allow for continuity and articulation across a variety of scales. Tying these systems to gravity, cohesion, or other self-stopping methods reintegrates abstract models into a real environment. The experience of an architecture emerging from the negotiation of external and internal forces establishes a continuum between place, spectator, and event.

(1) Spuybroek, Lars. The Architecture of Continuity. Rotterdam: V_2 Publishing. 2008