Xi’an Football Stadium

Competition

Xi’an Local Government launched an international design competition in early 2020 to propose the urban integration solution of a 60,000 seats football specific stadium to confirm Xi’an as host city of the AFC 2023 Cup. Several great international architecture practices teamed up with the best practices in China to jointly propose their Concept Designs. IDOM teamed up with BIAD (Beijing Institute for Architecture Design).

Xi’an heritage tradition as a crossroad at the Silk Road is the idea driving the proposed design. Silk is a unifying idea at the proposal, with ribbons to unify the project’s masterplan, and generating the Stadium façade, with a dynamic lighting system, as its central piece.

The project singular location in the Central Business District was taken to propose creating a Central Activity Zone, by unifying different activities (commercial, business, cultural and sports) in a urban environment which enhances pedestrian traffic in the economic central point of a large city.

The Stadium itself seeks for a compact configuration of the seating bowl, allowing almost 62,000 spectators by the requirements of FIFA and AFC. The compact de-sign enhances football atmosphere with a lightweight cable structure roof, and also allows to proportion its scale in the city, while including the best sustainability performance aspects.

The interrelation of the Stadium and its surroundings was considered to optimize pedestrian and traffic accesses, as well as the optimum operation flows at the Stadium, counting with Match Mode and Event Mode. The inclu-sion of restaurant and leisure uses into the Stadium is also interesting, as it included creating a public space at the contour of the Stadium in the form of a Skywalk. Training pitches were included to allow the stadium to become an AFC 2023 venue, and underground levels saw the incorporation of carparking and commercial areas that are connected and extended along the main street connecting with the City.