Beautiful Moves

Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer, once pleaded for `a pretty move for the love of God' when watching his beloved soccer. This book is likewise interested in `beautiful moves', but turns instead to the architecture of the stadium as an architectural type as captivating as the play occurring on the pitch. In the past 30 years a number of stadium projects have been completed that highlight how this building type has become a site for architectural innovation and complexity. Clients that once would once have turned to large firms specializing in stadia instead began to hire A-list and Pritzker-Prize-winning architects to design new stadia. As a result, in cities around the world stadia are often the most expensive and monumental of projects, and may be icons of identity and defining presences in the built landscape. By examining a range of exemplary stadia from around the world (built, unbuilt and demolished projects), this book presents for the first time a canon for this building type. Organized chronologically, it includes famous examples from the likes of Lina Bo Bardi, Frei Otto, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Herzog & de Meuron, Foster + Partners and Studio Gang.