The idea of a floating football stadium sounds like something from a dystopian future, complete with flying cars and pills that give you all of your daily nutrients. In reality, however, it is more about the world of football grounds that were built in order to be able to float on water.
As you might imagine, these haven’t exactly become the norm, but may well be the prototype for a world in which global warming continues and sea levels continue to rise. Some floating stadiums have been little more than concepts, whilst others have been very real indeed.
The Float @ Marina Bay
If you want to get a sense of what can be achieved when it comes to floating football grounds, then you need only look back to The Float @ Marina Bay. Also known as the Marina Bay Floating Platform, it was built in 2007 when the plan was to use it as an interim venue for the kinds of events that would usually be hosted at Singapore’s National Stadium in Kallang.
That was being rebuilt as part of a project known as Singapore Sports Hub, hence the need for a location to stand in for it during the rebuilding process.
The plan was for it to be dismantled in 2012, but it was still going in 2017, at which point it was expanded and redeveloped as a permanent venue that would be known as NS Square.
The Float at Marina Bay, Singapore https://t.co/mdyRHYPF45 pic.twitter.com/XIYhSHXxxc
— sẹun مشجع adéyẹmí (@seunandez) May 14, 2024
In the end, various factors interfered with the redevelopment, but the current trajectory is for it to be completed in 2027. Between its opening in 2007 and the redevelopment works getting underway, The Float @ Marina Bay, as it is stylised, has hosted events such as the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics, the Singapore Cup Final, and numerous other football matches.
Floating Offshore Stadium
When it was announced that Qatar was to be the host nation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, one of the major issues that the country had as part of its sports-washing plans was that there weren’t enough football stadiums of the quality necessary to host such major matches. As a result, numerous different design concepts were put forward, with one of those being the idea of the Floating Offshore Stadium.
It was developed by the German architects stadiumconcept and was an ambitious idea for a swimming construction that could be relocated across the seas.
The idea was for an eco-friendly ground to be built that was powered by a mix of various energies, with the mobility and multi-decade utilisation ensuring a long-term future. In the end, the stadium wasn’t built for Qatar, with the closest thing being Stadium 974, which was made out of shipping containers and was the first temporary venue in the history of the FIFA World Cup.
Even so, few people in the world of football stadium design and implementation will have forgotten about the promise that the Floating Offshore Stadium allowed.
The ‘Oceaniums’ Concept
If you want a floating stadium concept that will truly blow you away then you need look no further than the floating sports arenas that have been dubbed ‘Oceaniums’ by the architecture firm behind them. In short, imagine a ginormous cruise liner with an open-top sports stadium in the centre and you will have gone some way to being able to picture what it is that we’re talking about. Created by Vincent Callebaut Architecture, the entire point of the stadiums that they dreamt up was that they were sustainable, meaning they could be used in every major tournament.
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Rather than going through the process of having to build a series of new football grounds every time FIFA decided to award the hosting of the World Cup to one of the ever-growing sports-washing nations like Qatar or Saudi Arabia, putting countless migrant worker lives at risk, the stadiums on the sea could simply be sailed to a new location in order to host all of the football matches necessary for the duration of the competition. Labeled as ‘half-boat, half stadium’, the low-carbon ‘community hubs’ could be navigated thanks to renewable energy sources.
The name, of course, is something of a portmanteau of ‘ocean’ and ‘stadium’, with the plan being to build them using just recycled and bio-sourced materials. The sustainable city designs could be used whilst floating at sea or docked up to land, with large decks away from the pitches themselves that would allow for socialising areas when the matches are either over or half-time is taking place. Plant life would be incorporated throughout, meaning that the long-term future of the stadiums would be all but assured as a result.