We Will Box You
Qatar was announced to be the host of the FIFA 2022 World Cup in December 2010. As the first Middle East and Arab country to host, Qatar committed $300 billion for building seven new stadiums and supporting infrastructure to make its impression as a global hub for human achievement, commerce, and innovation. One of the new venues built was Ras Abu Aboud Stadium, more popularly known as Stadium 974. 974 represents the country code for Qatar and number of recycled shipping containers used in its construction. Designed by Fenwick and Iribarren, Stadium 974 was built to disappear, be modular and reusable: the only new stadium designed to be dismantled and moved to other locations in the future.
Stadium 974 by the numbers:
40,000 person capacity
40% reduced water usage taking advantage of the natural breeze of nearby Doha waterfront rather than using cooling technology
7 out of total 64 matches hosted
40’ Length x 8.5’ Height x 8’ Wide, 8,500 lbs, and 25 year usable lifetime for each shipping container
7,000 kilometers away from Doha is the maximum distance to ship Stadium 974 if reused only once and achieve lower emissions than a permanent structure
There is no denying the popularity of shipping containers as a building foundation for many structures including pre-fab homes and swimming pools.
Image: Shipping container home and swimming pool
The Global Sustainability Assessment System (GSAS) gave Stadium 974 a 5-star rating for both its design and construction. The stadium made its various impressions on the millions of people around the world watching the matches. However, it also had its share of controversy. It was estimated that over two million migrant workers were needed to build the infrastructure to accommodate one-and-a-half million people for a month. Sustainability watchdog groups like Carbon Market Watch published its numbers on where the FIFA 2022 event landed versus its estimated environmental impact. The numbers reflect misses in carbon neutrality goals.
Source: SouthPole and ASTAD 2021
Image: Google Map, distance from Doha to Kyiv
Stadium 974 may have been a vanity project at a large scale given the numbers and human sacrifice needed to build it. Let’s see how many more people those 974 boxes will rock in the future. Kyiv is less than 5,000km away from Doha.