Webinar: Transforming Places into Destinations

Jack shared insights from the recent Sport and the City Stadiums research report, published by Future Places Studio, Art-Invest Real Estate, and Okana, which explores how stadiums can contribute to creating and fostering inclusive and engaging urban spaces. 

The Sport and the City report presents the case that sports stadiums should no longer be designed and operated as a single use asset sitting empty or underutilised for large parts of the week, but rather they should be versatile and integrated placemaking anchors which activate and enliven their local neighbourhoods year round. 

Jack explained how the research presents a high level strategic vision to guide and inspire architects, developers and stadium (asset) owners in how they can approach stadium design differently.  

Jack commented: “When integrating sport into the city we should be creating a mixture of free and paid for spaces which encourage and enable people to play and feel connected to a community. Sports stadiums and venues of all scales present the opportunity to create mixed use destinations which appeal to both a local and global audience.  As a result, sports led regeneration should be connected into the wider socio-economic challenges and opportunities.” 

Jeremy added: “As an Architect and place shaper, our role as designers is to rethink the way we do our work and engineer the opportunities for spontaneous appropriation of place – removing the keep of the grass mentality and creating a sense of belonging and legitimate reasons to use the spaces our cities in additional ways that do not conform to the traditional sports venue.” 

In addition to being smarter with the design process for multi use, place shaping needs to take into consideration climate change and how to design our assets for climate resilience. With changing weather systems the design for both indoor and outdoor spaces needs to take into consideration how to maximise use and minimise waste and particularly wasted energy.