Quzhou Stadium // MAD Architects

Text description provided by the architects.

Quzhou Stadium manifests as a piece of “land art” that submerges itself into a futuristic landscape of hills, sunken gardens, and a lake. Breaking away from conventional sports complexes that signify progress and power, this project seeks to bring together elite competition among professional athletes with the physical activities of everyday people.

© MAD Architects

© MAD Architects

The sports spirit is supplemented by an oasis of urban parkland, contributing to the city’s cultural life.Quzhou is a historical city with extensive forestry covering more than 70% of its land area. MAD envisions otherworldly plan where buildings disappear into the undulating landscape, while the spirit of sport is merged with anembodied knowledge of nature.The periphery of the site is surrounded by a dense forest that shelters the park from the city, while the design choreographs an excursion from the wider urban context to this otherworldly landscape.

© MAD Architects

© MAD Architects

The stadium (30,000-person) is part of the 700,000-square-meter sports park that also consists of a gymnasium (10,000-person), with a natatorium, sports hall, and outdoor sports venues. The campus includes a science and technology museum, a hotel, and retail areas.Six mountainous peaks are dispersed across the site at various heights. As if grown out of the landscape naturally, the undulating peaks at the north gradually decrease towards the southeast side to form a lake, concluding the terraformed effect with a calm, delicate surface.

© MAD Architects

© MAD Architects

Towards the east, the stadium curves into the ground to form a deep, crater-like space, crowned by a translucent ‘halo’ that gently hovers above like a cloud. The halo’s proximity to the earth makes it seemingly close yet untouchable, triggering an illusion of tension between earth and sky..

© MAD Architects

© MAD Architects

Quzhou Stadium Gallery