What would it take, within this field of obsessive growth-orientation, to embrace degrowth as a principle for future development? In this context we limit our attention to football architecture. The main question we are raising in this article is whether or not there is a potential within the world of sports to embrace circular thinking as an alternative form of governance. But if this is supposed to become more than a rhetoric trick to land bids for sporting mega-events ( Kowalska, 2017, p. Paradoxically, in light of these excessive tendencies, there is also much talk about sustainability in sport. 145), rooted in dreams about boosterism, trickle-down economic benefits, sector expansion and capital investment. Schimmel has called ‘the problematic growth model’ of sports ( Schimmel, 1995, p. Increasingly more spectacular, expensive and complex sport venues stand as symbols of what Kimberley S. This applies to the world of elite sports, where bigger arenas, higher standards and larger revenue has been the name of the game. We have been building unsustainably for so long that overspending and wastefulness has become the norm. The main problem, argues the architect Duncan Baker-Brown, is the saturation of production density, consumer goods and building mass of today's society (2017: xiv). Fresh statistics from the EU indicate that the building industry accounts for about 50% of all extracted materials in Europe and that the construction sector is responsible for over 35% of the EU's total waste generation ( European Commission, 2020, p. This is now translating into architecture, design and heritage management as an anti-dote to overspending and waste accumulation in the building industry ( Mercader-Moyano, 2017 Charter, 2018). The 2021 recipients of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, one of the highest honors in the profession, were Lacaton and Vassall, the French duo whose motto is ‘Never demolish, never replace.’ Similar agendas are currently being voiced by a number of architects and planners inspired by the principles of circular economy, which is an economic system where all forms of waste are minimized through continuous use of resources ( Lacy et al., 2020). ‘Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth’ was the heading of the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale. He does not stand alone in this call for downscaling. According to the Japanese architect Ohno Hidetoshi, the world no longer has the capacity to absorb everything we build, produce and consume. ‘If the twentieth century can be characterized by growth or expansion, the greatest issue for the world in the twenty-first century is shrinkage’ ( Hidetoshi, 2009, p. The aim is not only to scrutinize the general lack of reuse but also to highlight green strategies which could give existing stadiums a longer life. We bring in fresh perspectives from sports science, preservation, architecture, and circular design theory to explain why older stadiums become obsolete and to challenge the premise of that destiny.
One of them has already gone through renovation to remain in use while the other is vacant but currently under way to be renovated. We carry out in-depth analysis of two existing stadiums, Tynecastle Park in Edinburgh and Stadio Flaminio in Rome. In this paper, we look critically at the well-established strategy of replacing old stadiums with new ones by questioning the climate impact of new arenas and investigating the reuse potential of existing ones. In addition to that comes a conviction that newness is needed to attract sponsors, investors, and larger audiences-a position powered by commercial interest and the idea of the stadium as an ‘urban generator.’ While new stadiums may have a significant potential when it comes to green performability, that does not necessarily mean that older stadiums are surplus to requirements, even from a climate perspective. So far, the emphasis has primarily been on new arenas, in line with the widespread belief in international architecture of the 2000s that older buildings are less energy-efficient by default. Fuelled by large sporting events like the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the ‘Green Games,’ and the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, stadium architecture has become a vehicle for this trend.
Since the turn of the new Millennium, there has been an increase in efforts to build environmental-friendly sports arenas around the world.
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