Moscow for the 2018 world cup and a stadium designed by Erick van Egeraat

VTB Arena Moscow, Erick van Egeraat, copyright: © Erick van Egeraat, image available at bustler.net

I just received a notification from a newspaper saying that Moscow will organize the 2018 world cup. I am not a football fan. But my question was the same as many journalists: which stadiums for this event? Infrastructures and stadiums, according to journalists, are under redevelopment. Let's take a first and very interesting project, as example, proposed by Erick van Egeraat and his Russian partner Mikhail Posokhin (Mosproekt-2), in collaboration with Bollinger & Grohmann Structural Engineers. The 300,000 square-meter VTB Arena is one of the largest projects developed in the Russian Federation. It consists of the redevelopment of the Dynamo Moscow stadium and an articulation of the surrounding park. This multifunctional building includes a 45,000 seat Stadium Arena for Dynamo Moscow (as mentioned above), a 10,000-seat Arena Hall, a Retail and Entertainment complex, restaurants, parking and other facilities.
The architects Erick van Egeraat and Mikhail Posokhin argued in van Egeraat's website that this large-scale project is also a self-sustainable building. The building shape looks like a torus with a beautiful envelope. This envelope will be designed by Bollinger and Grohmann Structural Engineers. This project illustrates an increasing tendency for the use of parametric tools in architecture (and to go further its popularity in architectural field). As Klaus Bollinger, Manfred Grohmann and Oliver Tessmann argued in the July/August 2010 issue of Architectural Design, computational design techniques are changing the role of analysis tools and asks a much more precise collaboration between engineers and architects (to this list, we must include mathematicians, and other fields). Collaborations with engineers such as AKT, Arup or Bollinger and Grohmann show new objectives in construction. I am currently doing research for a new post which key element is parametric model (I am trying to understand the importance of mathematics in architecture). Doing so, I remark this increasing popularity of, not only, parametric tools, but also collaboration with engineers, mathematicians, biologists, and so forth. This popularity puts a lift on the evidence of the potential of parametric tools through descriptions of the process that led to the final product (Hudson, 2008, Proceedings, Conference: Advances in Architectural Geometry 2008, PDF document).

VTB Arena Moscow, Erick van Egeraat. Copyright: © Erick van Egeraat. Image available at bustler.net

It will be very interesting to have information on what will be the key considerations for Erick van Egeraat and Mikhael Posokhin. Let's wait (even impatiently) for the beginning of the construction (around 2012-2013).

VTB Arena Moscow, Erick van Egeraat. Copyright: © Erick van Egeraat. Image available at bustler.net

VTB Arena Moscow, Erick van Egeraat. Copyright: © Erick van Egeraat.

The VTB Arena Moscow may be completed around 2016.

VTB Arena Moscow, Erick van Egeraat. Copyright: © Erick van Egeraat

The video below furnishes interesting outlook of this project.


Data sheet
Design: 2010
Realisation:
Architects: Erick van Egeraat Architects, Mikhail Posokhin (Mosproekt-2)
Engineers: Bollinger & Grohmann Engineers
Client: VTB - Bank
Gross floor area: 300,000 m2
Video: Copyright © Erick van Egeraat Architects