Forest Green Rovers Eco Stadium

The Eco Park stadium for Forest Green Rovers will be an important addition for the community.

- ZAHA HADID

The club’s heritage, ambition and vision reflect ZHA’s own, combining the latest material research and construction techniques with new design approaches to build a more ecologically sustainable and inclusive architecture.

Forest Green Rovers have established a holistic vision for the site to retain its pastoral qualities whilst adding new facilities for the town. While the stadium will be the centrepiece, the project creates a new public realm with both recreational and occupational uses, enabling the entire site to contribute to the town - not only on match days, but every day of the year.

The design retains and enhances the existing meadow landscape of the site whilst adding the stadium and other functions for the town. Embodying low carbon construction methods and operational processes, it will be the first all timber football stadium with almost every element made of sustainably sourced timber including its structure, roof cantilevers and louvered cladding.

As a building material, timber is highly durable, recyclable and beautiful. The proximity of the stadium's structural elements to each other has also been determined to enable the seating terraces and floor slab to be made from timber. In most other stadiums, these elements are concrete or steel.

The stadium's roof is covered with a transparent membrane, which contributes to turf growth, minimizes stark shadows for players and fans and reduces the volumetric impact of the stadium from distant views in the surrounding landscape.